Hillary Clinton’s campaign quickly seized on Thursday’s news that former Secretary of State Colin Powell had received two classified emails to his private account, a charge Powell denied in multiple interviews.
The pair of emails were classified after the State Department’s inspector general opened a record-keeping review, stretching back over the tenures of five secretaries of state, in the wake of the Clinton email controversy last spring.
Rep. Elijah Cummings, top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, made the finding known in a letter he sent to Secretary of State John Kerry Thursday demanding to know more about the inspector general probe.
Neither of the two emails sent to Powell was marked classified, and both are more than a decade old. Powell disputed that the emails, which originated on official “state.gov” accounts, should be considered classified.
John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chair, called on the State Department to release Powell’s emails.
We agree with Sec. Powell that his emails are being overclassified & they should be released along wtih Hillary’s https://t.co/vzLNGAA4qD
— John Podesta (@johnpodesta) February 4, 2016
After the State Department announced last week that 22 of Clinton’s private emails were being upgraded to “top secret,” Clinton’s supporters accused the agency of over-classifying the materials. Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah, told the Washington Examiner Wednesday the number of “top secret” emails has already grown to 29.
Brian Fallon, Clinton’s spokesman, has repeatedly accused inspectors general looking into the issue of playing political games with the information they’ve disclosed to Congress.
Powell, like Clinton, is asserting the info is improperly classified and should be released. https://t.co/ByLwMtUheg
— Brian Fallon (@brianefallon) February 4, 2016
Cummings noted top aides to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had transmitted 10 now-classified emails. Rice has maintained she did not use email during her time as the nation’s chief diplomat.
The 12 total emails discovered among the private emails of Powell and Rice’s staff are classified at the “confidential” and “secret” levels, the two lowest levels of classification in government.
By way of comparison, more than 1,300 emails have been classified at those levels from the tranche Clinton provided to the State Department in Dec. 2014.
Neither Powell nor Rice set up private server networks in their homes to maintain total control over their records. Clinton’s decision to create a private email network is presently under investigation by the FBI, although Clinton has noted she is not the target of that investigation.
