And the plot surrounding Hillary Clinton’s e-mail account thickens at quite possibly the most inconvenient time for the former secretary of State.
Clinton, who is currently making her first official campaign stops in Iowa, was asked by congressional investigators in a December 13, 2012, letter whether she used a personal e-mail account while at State, according to a report in The New York Times.
Clinton never replied to the letter, which was authored by Rep. Darrell Issa (Calif.), the Republican chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. What’s more, the State Department responded in its own letter at the end of March 2013 — when Hillary had already left her post — but ignored the question.
The Times received the letters from an anonymous congressional official. Issa’s letter to Clinton requested answers to the following questions:
1) “Have you or any senior agency official ever used a personal e-mail account to conduct official business? If so, please identify the account used.”
2) “Does the agency require employees to certify on a periodic basis or at the end of their employment with the agency they have turned over any communications involving official business that they have sent or received using nonofficial accounts?”
Issa also asked for a hard copy of the State Department’s policy regarding officials’ use of private e-mail to conduct official business.
In its March 27 response letter to Issa, State merely addressed its e-mail policy, explaining that individuals using a private account “should make it clear that his or her personal e-mail is not being used for official business.”
Hillary Clinton, of course, has been scrutinized ever since The New York Times reported in March that the former secretary of State exclusively used a private e-mail account and server while at the State Department. In so doing, she was violating a 2009 record-handling regulation.
In order to provide the government with records of her electronic messages, Hillary had her staff separate out those e-mails regarding official business from those deemed personal, curiously directing her aides to delete all of her personal messages after the business-related ones were recovered and delivered to the State Department.
She also wiped her personal server clean.
Though Clinton insisted in a press conference that she used the private account for the “convenience” of not carrying two devices, it has since been discovered that she did, in fact, use at least two devices to check e-mail during her stint at State.
An aide to Hillary said in a statement Tuesday that “her usage was widely known to the over 100 department and U.S. government colleagues she e-mailed, as her address was visible on every e-mail she sent.”
Clinton officially announced her presidential campaign Sunday before embarking on a trip to Iowa via bus that has thus far included stops at an Ohio Chipotle and an Iowa community college.
