Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has instructed her attorney to give the U.S. Justice Department her private email server and a thumb drive of work-related emails from her tenure as secretary of state, CNN reported on Tuesday, quoting a campaign spokeswoman.
Clinton's use of her private email for her work as America's top diplomat came to light in March and drew fire from political opponents who accused her of sidestepping transparency and record-keeping laws. The private account was linked to a server in her New York home.
Spokesmen for Clinton did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A Justice Department spokeswoman said she did not have any information at this time to share with reporters.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation recently began looking into the security of the federal records and classified information contained among Clinton's emails. The U.S. government considers federal records to be government property.
The Justice Department has said the FBI began investigating after the inspector general who oversees the U.S. intelligence agencies, I. Charles McCullough III, formally notified them of his concern that there was classified information not in the government's control.
While secretary of state under President Barack Obama, Clinton eschewed an official state.gov email address in favor of a private clintonemail.com email account connected to a computer server in her New York home. At least one senior aide, Huma Abedin, also used the server for some work email. Clinton said the unusual arrangement broke no rules that were in force at the time.
Last December, she provided what she said were copies of all the work emails she had in her possession, nearly two years after she stepped down as secretary of state.
Clinton handed over about 30,000 emails she sent and received, although her staff have since acknowledged without explanation that some work emails are missing. She did not hand over another 30,000 emails from this period that she deemed personal and said she chose “not to keep.”
The State Department has been steadily releasing the emails to the public in keeping with Clinton's request after redacting parts of them to remove sensitive or classified information.
State Dept advised parts of two emails should be top-secret
The U.S. State Department said on Tuesday that the intelligence community recommended that parts of unreleased emails from Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state should be upgraded to the top-secret level.
“Department employees circulated these emails on unclassified systems in 2009 and 2011 and ultimately some were forwarded to Secretary Clinton. They were not marked as classified,” State Department John Kirby said in a statement.
“These emails have not been released to the public,” the statement added. “While we work with the Director of National Intelligence to resolve whether, in fact, this material is actually classified, we are taking steps to ensure the information is protected and stored appropriately.”
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