Clinton to FBI: Colin Powell Told Me to Use Private Email

According to notes the FBI gave Congress this week, Hillary Clinton told agents that former Secretary of State Colin Powell had strongly advised her to use her personal email account, calling it “transformative” when he ran the department. Clinton’s nearly four-hour interview with investigators in July eventually led the bureau to decide against pursuing criminal charges. The notes—and other reporting—show that Clinton said she spoke with Powell on more than one occasion about his email practices before she assumed the post. Joe Conason’s soon-to-be-published book on Bill Clinton’s life after the presidency also includes a description of one such exchange, according to The New York Times. Clinton attended a dinner party thrown by Madeleine Albright, who asked each of the former secretaries of state present to offer one piece of advice to Clinton before she began her job. According to Conason, “Powell told her to use her own email, as he had done, except for classified communications, which he had sent and received via a State Department computer.” In that moment, Conason wrote, Powell “thus confirmed a decision she had made months earlier—to keep her personal account and use it for most messages.”