State Department officials have received new official emails sent to and from Hillary Clinton that the former secretary of state never released.
The email exchange involves a 2009 conversation with Gen. David Petraeus, who was then head of U.S. Central Command, according to a report Friday by the Associated Press.
The conversation began before Clinton became secretary of state, but continued into the beginning of her tenure. The State Department has already admitted, thanks to documents released through the Freedom of Information Act, that it does not have emails from the first weeks of her tenure.
John Kirby, State Department spokesman, said the Department of Defense provided the email chain.
A State official declined to comment on how the Pentagon obtained the document.
The State Department inspector general also provided the agency with a copy of the email, Kirby noted.
He also said the chain would now be subject to FOIA requests like any other State Department record.
Clinton asserted in an Aug. 8 sworn declaration that she had provided the State Department with all of her work-related emails. The declaration means she could face perjury charges if investigators discover official communications among the deleted messages on her server.
The Democratic presidential candidate has repeatedly claimed she turned over everything that could possibly be considered related to her diplomatic work.
However, that claim was challenged this summer when Sidney Blumenthal, a longtime Clinton confidante, gave the House Select Committee on Benghazi more than a dozen Benghazi-related email exchanges with Clinton that the State Department had never received.
The discovery of the new email chain will likely fuel skepticism of her email statements to date. Clinton has been forced to confront new questions this week about her use of a private server, including the fact that she and the State Department both misrepresented the agency’s initial document request.
Clinton and former State spokesperson Marie Harf had both characterized the request as a routine housekeeping inquiry. But Kirby said Tuesday the agency had only reached out to Clinton after discovering she had used a private email account in the course of responding to subpoenas from the select committee.
