Clinton Violated ‘Clear Cut’ Email Rules

Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email account for government business was a “clear-cut” violation of State Department guidelines, according to a report from Politico. A manual for agency employees stated: “It is the Department’s general policy that normal day-to-day operations be conducted on an authorized [Automated Information System], which has the proper level of security control to provide nonrepudiation, authentication and encryption, to ensure confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the resident information.” The policy had been in place since 2005, and an inspector general described the directive as “clear-cut” in 2012 when criticizing Air Force Maj. Gen. Scott Gration, who was serving as U.S. ambassador to Kenya, for using an email account outside the department’s official system. According to a New York Times report, State Department officials “held negotiations with Mrs. Clinton’s lawyers and advisers to gain access to her personal email records” in August 2014. The effort to get Clinton to release her emails went all the way up Secretary of State John Kerry’s chief of staff, who signed off on the decision to request them, the Times reports.