State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki could not say Thursday whether Hillary Clinton signed a form affirming that she had turned over all documents, including emails, dealing with official business.
Nick Merrill, Clinton’s spokesman, has not responded to the Washington Examiner’s question about whether Clinton completed Form OF109 when she gave up being secretary of state two years ago.
The form is a separation agreement that all employees must file before leaving the department. Merrill also declined to answer the same question when it was posed to him by Fox News’ Megyn Kelly and the Associated Press.
Staff at State have been fined or jailed for failing to file the form or who answer it falsely. Whether Clinton did so may be critically important to her 2016 presidential hopes because at a news conference Tuesday she declared that she complied with all applicable laws and regulations when using a private email for business at State.
Several laws and regulations oblige federal employees to turn over all private emails that dealt with official business. Clinton is not the only member of President Obama’s cabinet to use private email. Former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson used both a government email account with a fake name, Richard Windsor, and her private email to conduct official business.
Clinton said she and her lawyer thoroughly reviewed 60,000 emails and deleted thousands that they decided were private, giving the remainder to the State Department. Clinton has asked the department to make those emails public.
She refused, however, to agree to allow an independent expert to examine her private email server. It would, she said, “remain private.”
In a related development, Fox News reporter James Rosen reported Thursday that an informal group of cyber security experts and hackers determined that the Clinton server is still operating and extremely vulnerable to intrusion by outsiders such as foreign intelligence services.
Merrill circulated a fact sheet in conjunction with the Tuesday news conference that claimed the server has always been guarded by the Secret Service and protected with the latest updated security programs.
But Rosen said the informal group easily accessed the server and determined that it is using an older version of the Microsoft Outlook Web Application software.
“It’s an indication they’re not keeping up with software upgrades. If I were a bad guy, I’d start looking for any vulnerabilities in that older version they’re using,” one of the hackers told Rosen.
Mark Tapscott is executive editor of the Washington Examiner.
