Former Secretary of State Colin Powell pushed back on attempts Thursday to liken his infrequent use of a personal email address more than a decade ago to Hillary Clinton’s exclusive reliance on a private server when she held the State Department’s top position.
“It’s a lot different from what the rest of us were doing and what Mrs. Clinton is doing,” Powell, a Republican appointee, told NBC. Powell spoke after a top House Democrat revealed in a public letter the discovery that Powell had received two classified emails in his private inbox while serving as secretary of state.
Those emails originated from a “state.gov” address, unlike many of the more than 1,600 classified emails transmitted on Clinton’s private server.
“I had no private server, no private domain. I did not take [any messages] anywhere when I left the department,” Powell told Politico.
Powell used a commercial email account to send and receive government emails when his official email account was running slowly, he said.
Clinton never used her official email account, and instead tapped a former campaign official to set up and maintain a private server in her home though which she routed all of her official communications.
The pair of emails sent to Powell were classified at the two lowest levels of classification and were discovered by the State Department inspector general during a sweeping review of past email practices, Rep. Elijah Cummings said in a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry Thursday.
Twenty-nine emails from Clinton’s private server are thought to have been upgraded to “top secret.”
Clinton’s campaign was quick to tout the inspector general’s discovery Thursday. Her campaign chair and spokesman attempted to draw parallels between Powell’s classified private emails and Clinton’s.
