Hillary Clinton created her own private email system that she exclusively used as secretary of state, ignoring “very specific guidance” from the White House by not even creating, let alone using, a government email account. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Tuesday the Obama administration has to take Clinton at her word that she turned over all relevant emails for archiving.
The Associated Press traced the computer server that sent and received Clinton’s emails back to her home in Chappaqua, New York. The practice gave Clinton “impressive control over limiting access to her message archives” and surpassed privatizing practices used by other politicans who employed Yahoo or Microsoft email accounts. “Operating her own server would have afforded Clinton additional legal opportunities to block government or private subpoenas in criminal, administrative, or civil cases because her lawyers could object in court before being forced to turn over any emails,” the AP writes. In addition, homemade email servers are not as reliable or secure from hackers as those in commercial data centers.
According to a report in The New York Times, there were “several instances in which records requests sent to the State Department, which had no access to Mrs. Clinton’s emails, came up empty.” One of those instances involved congressional investigators and emails related to the Benghazi consulate attacks.