Some Clinton emails classified from Day 1: report
Dozens of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails would automatically have entered the world with “classified” status, according to a report.
At least 30 email threads since 2009 immediately deserve that designation based on the context in which they were written, according to Reuters.
Reuters’s review of Clinton’s public State emails would undermine her presidential campaign’s claims that she never sent or received messages that had already gotten classified status.
{mosads}The report found that the email chains in question included “foreign government information,” or any information provided by overseas officials in confidence to their U.S. equivalents.
Such communications are “presumed” classified, it said, as both a national security precaution and a safeguard of the diplomatic process and its integrity.
Reuters said Friday it had uncovered at least 17 emails sent by Clinton during her tenure at State that would possibly qualify for classification given they contain “foreign government information.”
State Department spokesman Alec Gerlach disputed the analysis in a statement issued later Friday.
“We do not have the ability to go back and recreate all of the various factors that would have gone into the determinations,” Gerlach said, adding that Reuters was making “outlandish accusations.”
The U.S. government deems messages “classified” in this way regardless of whether they are written or spoken correspondences, Reuters added.
“It’s born classified,” said J. William Leonard, former director of the Information Security Oversight Office between 2002 and 2008.
“If a foreign minister just told the secretary of State something in confidence, by U.S. rules that is classified at the moment it’s in U.S. channels and U.S. possession,” he told Reuters, adding that any State Department statements to the contrary were “blowing smoke.”
Clinton’s email controversy is currently plaguing her bid for the Democratic presidential nomination next year.
Critics have latched onto her use of a private email server while at State as proof she is neither transparent nor trustworthy enough for the White House in 2016.
The former first lady fiercely rejected claims she acted unethically by using a personal storage device during a testy press conference earlier this week.
“What I did was legally permitted, first and foremost,” Clinton said Tuesday evening from Las Vegas. “We turned over everything that was work-related, every single thing.”
“I regret this has become a cause celebre,” she added. “But that does not change the facts, and no matter what anybody tries to say, the facts are stubborn.”
Clinton announced last week she was turning over her email server and its backup thumb drive to Justice Department officials for an official investigation.
Her campaign has begun an extensive media push arguing that decision is an effort at clearing the Democrat of any accusation of wrongdoing or subterfuge.
Voter concerns over Clinton’s technology decisions have gradually eroded faith in her Oval Office bid across multiple national polls.
She is currently struggling to maintain her lead for the Democratic presidential nomination against the surging Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
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