http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/266497-clinton-dismisses-inspector-general-report-on-her-emailJanuary 20, 2016, 04:27 pm
Clinton dismisses inspector general report on her email
By Rebecca Savransky
Hillary Clinton is standing by her statement that, while at the State Department, she didn't send or receive emails on her private email server that had a high level of classified material, NPR reported Wednesday.
She said nothing has changed in the past months.
"As the State Department has confirmed, I never sent or received any material marked classified, and that hasn't changed in all of these months," the presidential front-runner said in an interview with NPR's Ari Shapiro in San Antonio, Texas, on Wednesday. "This, seems to me, to be, you know, another effort to inject this into the campaign. It's another leak."
A report issued Tuesday by the intelligence community’s internal watchdog, Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III, found emails on Clinton's server that were marked as "special access programs" — a classification above "top-secret."
“To date, I have received two sworn declarations from one [intelligence community] element,” McCullough said in a letter to Congress. “These declarations cover several dozen emails containing classified information determined by the IC element to be at the CONFIDENTIAL, SECRET, and TOP SECRET/SAP levels.”
A spokesman for Clinton said earlier Wednesday that an inspector general who reported finding highly classified emails on the former secretary of State's server was colluding with Republicans in attempts to attack the White House hopeful.
He said the State Department has said these emails were not classified when they were sent or received.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.), one of the recipients of the inspector general's letter, dismissed the statements.
"I won't comment on the letter, but I can comment that I didn’t conspire with anybody," Burr told reporters in the Senate basement on Wednesday.
Clinton said in the NPR interview Wednesday that the report was a "continuation of inter-agency dispute that has been going on now for some months."
"I'm just going to leave it up to the professionals at the Justice Department, because nothing that this says changes the fact that I never sent or received material marked classified," she said.
Clinton said the emails that are being referred to contained a forward of a New York Times article on a classified drone program.
"How a New York Times public article that goes around the world could be in any way viewed as classified, or the fact that it would be sent to other people off of the New York Times site, I think, is one of the difficulties that people have in understanding what this is about," Clinton said.
The emails were likely retroactively classified, she said.
"But even if they have retroactive concerns and doubts, that doesn't change the fact that these were not marked classified at the time they were sent or received."
