A senior State Department official told a Senate panel Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email while serving as secretary of state was “not acceptable” Wednesday as lawmakers questioned whether Clinton had violated open records laws.
Joyce Barr, assistant secretary of administration at the State Department, attempted to assure concerned members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that her agency had taken steps to prevent another massive record-keeping failure from occurring.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, pressed Barr for details of a fledgling inspector general review of the State Department’s archiving systems, which Secretary John Kerry requested after news of Clinton’s private email use sparked outrage.
“You don’t have any way of verifying that you have all of the official emails” Clinton sent and received on a server she constructed to host all her communications while in office, Cornyn noted.
Barr admitted the agency had “taken [Clinton’s] word” that the 55,000 pages of emails the former secretary provided contained all relevant records.
Cornyn demanded to know whether Barr would be concerned about a “premeditated and deliberate attempt … by a high-level government official to set up a personal email system in a way that would circumvent all the laws Congress has passed to enforce the public’s right to know.”
Barr said she would “in theory” have concerns about such a situation.
“The message is loud and clear that that is not acceptable,” she said.
The hearing on ways to improve public access to government records came amid intense scrutiny of Clinton’s conduct while secretary of state given revelations that she shielded her communications from archiving requirements.
Questions about whether foreign donations to her family’s charity influenced her decisions as the nation’s chief diplomat have only increased pressure on her camp to release the entire contents of the server.
