A State Department official asked FBI Director James Comey to hand over electronic copies of any emails on Hillary Clinton’s private server that may have been deleted.
Patrick Kennedy, the State Department’s top records official, wrote in a letter to Comey Monday that the FBI had confiscated the thumb drives containing Clinton’s emails before her attorney complied with a request to provide electronic copies to the State Department, according to documents obtained by Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act.
Kennedy asked the FBI to share digital copies of the 55,000 printed pages of emails the State Department already has in its possession.
“Additionally, to the extent the FBI recovers any potential federal records that may have existed on the server at various points in time in the past, we request that you apprise the Department insofar as such records correspond with Secretary Clinton’s tenure at the Department of State,” Kennedy wrote.
“Because of the Department’s commitment to preserving its federal records, we also ask that any recoverable media and content be preserved by the FBI so that we can determine how best to proceed,” he added.
Another letter obtained by the conservative watchdog group shows Kennedy asked David Kendall, Clinton’s private attorney, to erase all copies of a Benghazi-related email from his system after the State Department determined it should be classified at the “secret” level.
That is higher than the “confidential” designation given to most of the classified emails released by the State Department to date.
“Once you have made the electronic copy of the documents for the Department, please locate any electronic copies of the above-referenced classified document in your possession. If you locate any electronic copies, please delete them. Additionally, once you have done that, please empty your ‘Deleted Items’ folder,” Kennedy wrote to Kendall on May 22.
The email in question discussed the arrests of Libyans arrested in connection with the Benghazi attack. Parts of the email that involved the details of the arrests were redacted.
Kendall wrote back in July claiming he had given up all paper copies of the “secret” email, but refusing to erase the last digital copy of it.
Clinton’s attorney cited document preservation requests from the House Select Committee on Benghazi, the State Department inspector general and the inspector general of the intelligence community in his reply to Kennedy.
A letter from Paul Wester, head of the National Archives and Records Administration, indicated the national archives was still seeking an electronic copy of Clinton’s emails as late as July 2. Wester requested an update on when the agency might expect to receive the copies and why the process was dragging on.
