Records from the State Department’s office of inspector general reveal the agency watchdog has taken early steps toward investigating Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email address and server during her time as secretary of state.
Steven Linick, State’s inspector general since June 2013, signaled his office is making “preliminary” preparations for a larger probe of the policies that allowed Clinton to determine which of her official communications she wanted to withhold from the public, according to documents obtained by the nonpartisan watchdog group Cause of Action.
“In the past, when faced with employees who were using non-governmental email accounts for government business, the OIG questioned such activities,” Linick wrote in response to a letter from Sen. Charles Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The Iowa Republican had written to Linick in March seeking answers about the communications and business activities of Clinton and her top aides that were then emerging in the media.
Cause of Action filed a Freedom of Information Act request to State’s inspector general and to the National Archives and Records Administration seeking records related to the Clinton email controversy.
A letter from the State Department inspector general dated May 15 claimed there were just 18 documents that ever mentioned Clinton’s emails, the national archives or the Clinton Foundation.
Just six of those were given to Cause of Action in their entirety, with the others being redacted or punted to the State Department for further review.
But the few records that the agency did release had nothing to do with the information requested, and were not even produced during Clinton’s time in office.
The documents provided to Cause of Action included a letter from the Republican National Committee to Linick and several others from prominent GOP senators to the inspector general, all expressing concerns with his reluctance to investigate Clinton’s use of a private server.
While the letters had little relevance to Cause of Action’s original request, Linick’s replies revealed the inspector general is “conducting preliminary work to determine the proper scope and methodology for a review of the Department’s email communication policies and practices, among other things.”
Linick also wrote in a response to Grassley that the State Department inspector general planned to probe the agency’s use of a “special government employee” designation for key Clinton aides, including her deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin, to allow staff to work for other companies while continuing their roles at the State Department.
Abedin used the special designation to collect paychecks from the Clinton Foundation and Teneo Strategies, a consulting firm on whose board Bill Clinton once served.
Five days after the State Department inspector general denied the existence of the requested Clinton records, the national archives responded to the group’s FOIA request by revealing that responsive records did in fact exist with the State Department watchdog.
Emails obtained from the national archives show Paul Wester, the archives’ chief records officer, had informed fellow agency officials they needed to “discuss what we know” about the State Department’s handling of Clinton records and map out a way to “delicately go about learning more” in December 2012.
Patrick Kennedy, the undersecretary for management at State whose name has surfaced in a number of contexts surrounding Clinton’s conduct at State, sent a memo to the national archives weeks before the email scandal erupted, promising the agency he had reminded senior State Department officials “of their overall records management responsibilities, including e-mail, and issued a directive to preserve electronically the e-mail of Senior Officials upon their departure from the Department.”
Cause of Action said Kennedy’s memo “would suggest State and NARA were both aware of email preservation issues with State Department Senior Officials.”
