State Department officials likely destroyed a pair of BlackBerry phones given to Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, two top aides to Hillary Clinton.
The agency admitted the devices no longer existed in court documents filed Wednesday in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch.
“Because the device issued to Ms. Mills and Ms. Abedin would have been outdated models … those devices would have been destroyed or excessed,” State Department officials said in the court filings.
Clinton has acknowledged the fact that Abedin, her former deputy chief of staff, used an email account that was housed on her private server. She suggested Mills never used such an account.
Abedin has yet to turn over private emails from her time at the State Department, although several of Clinton’s other top aides have done so.
Abedin’s attorney has vowed to submit the emails by Aug. 28.
The FOIA request filed by Judicial Watch seeks records related to a special employee designation that was given to Abedin that allowed her to work simultaneously for the State Department, the Clinton Foundation and a controversial consulting firm called Teneo Strategies.
According to the court documents, the State Department has discovered potentially responsive documents in the “state.gov” email accounts of Abedin, Mills and two other unnamed employees.
One of the other employees worked on the staff of Patrick Kennedy, the official presently in charge of record management at the State Department.
Kennedy has also been embroiled in a number of controversies under Clinton, including the Benghazi attack and an alleged cover-up of sexual misconduct among several ambassadors.
The court filings also indicated State Department officials never issued a government BlackBerry to Clinton.
