Hillary Clinton’s campaign on Wednesday blamed the State Department’s sloppy record-keeping system for Clinton’s inability to preserve records from her private email system when she led the department.
The State Department’s Inspector General found that Clinton failed to preserve all records from her time leading the department, by not printing and filing those records.
“[B]ecause she did not do so, she did not comply with the department’s policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act,” the watchdog report said.
But speaking on CNN, Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said the State Department’s system was in such disarray, it thwarted Clinton’s effort to meet standard under the law for printing and filing her records.
“I think a big reason why the report finds that it was unacceptable and falls short for her to be using this habit of copying her aides on her correspondence was because it turned out that the record keeping in place at the State Department was so poor, that that didn’t ensure that those records were being preserved,” he said.
“And certainly with the benefit of hindsight, if we were aware that the record-keeping systems in the State Department were not tracking that correspondence, I think she would have sought to figure out another way to ensure that records were preserved,” he added.
The State Department said Wednesday that while Clinton’s arrangement wasn’t encouraged, it also wasn’t prohibited. However, the inspector general report said that if Clinton had sought to use her own email system, it mostly likely would have been rejected.
The report said officials would not have approved her “exclusive reliance on a personal email account to conduct Department business, because of the restrictions … and the security risks in doing so.”
