Hillary Clinton ignored a 2012 letter from congressional investigators specifically asking whether she had used a private email account while secretary of state, according to a letter obtained by the Washington Examiner.
Clinton never responded, and two months later after she had left office, the State Department bypassed the question in its reply.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., while serving as the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, penned the letter to Clinton as well as 17 other federal agencies after uncovering extensive use of personal email accounts by Energy Department employees to engage in official business and communicate about internal loan guarantee programs.
Issa sent the letters after allegations arose that Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson has used at least one alias email account under the name of “Richard Windsor” to conduct official business in violation of the Federal Records Act that requires the archiving of all government agencies emails.
To better understand exactly how the Obama administration was abiding by the archiving and public records laws, Issa asked a series of detailed questions about Clinton’s use of a personal email account for official business.
“Have you or any senior agency official ever used a personal email account to conduct official business,” he asked. “If so, please identify the account used.”
He also asked for written documentation of the agency’s policies regarding the use of nonofficial email accounts to conduct official business and any disciplinary proceedings for employees in violation of these policies.
One query asks whether the State Department requires employees to certify on a periodic basis and at the end of their employment that they have turned over communications involving official business that they have sent or receiving using personal accounts.
The New York Times, which first reported on the Issa letter to Clinton, said the State Department responded to the letter March 27 with a description of the department’s email policies but not mention of whether Clinton had followed them.
The letter said any employee using a personal account “should make it clear that his or her personal email is not being used for official business,” the Times reported.
An aide to Clinton said in a statement Tuesday that her as secretary of state “her usage was widely known to the over 100 department and U.S. government colleagues she emailed, as her address was visible on every email sent.”
That assertion begs the question of why nobody tried to correct her reliance on personal email for official business or report the breach of federal law and department policy to the State Department’s internal inspector general.
As the Examiner reported after the email controversy broke, the State Department at the time lacked an independent inspector general because President Obama failed to appoint one during Clinton’s entire time at State.
Republicans also want to know whether Issa’s December 2012 letter prompted Clinton to erase tens of thousands of emails from the private server.
“Why did the State Department wait until after Secretary Clinton left office to respond to the Issa letter?” asked Kurt Bardella, a former senior adviser to Issa on the Oversight and Government Reform panel. “Were Secretary Clinton’s efforts to deliberately conceal her official activities through use of her private email prompted by then-Chairman Issa’s request?”
Clinton last month held a press conference in which she acknowledged exclusively using a personal account during her entire State Department tenure. The email was maintained on a private server she purchased and set up at her New York state home.
She never explained why she failed to follow the Federal Records Act and State Department policy by periodically providing the personal emails of official business to the agency for archiving. She explained that she decided to use the personal email account as a matter of convenience because she didn’t want to carry two electronic devices.
That excuse did little to quell the public firestorm over Clinton’s use of a personal email account, which shielded her communications from media, watchdog and public information requests allowed under freedom of information laws.
A Quinnipiac University poll released last week suggests that the email controversy damaged Clinton presidential run before she even left the starting gate and could have forced her to jump into the race on Sunday to remain relevant and try to boost her standing.
A number of new GOP challengers, including Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida, as well as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, already have an edge in some key swing states.
