The US State Department’s inspector general has sharply criticised Hillary Clinton’s exclusive use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, saying she had not sought permission to use it and would not have received it if she had.
In a report delivered to members of Congress on Wednesday, the inspector general said Ms Clinton "had an obligation to discuss using her personal email account to conduct official business" with officials responsible for handling records and security, but that inspectors found "no evidence" that she had.
The report, as well as an FBI investigation and other legal challenges seeking information about her use of the server, are certain to keep alive a controversy that has shadowed Clinton's campaign for the presidency. They have all come to a climax just as she is close to defeating Senator Bernie Sanders for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Ms Clinton and her aides have played down the inquiries, saying that she would cooperate with investigators to put the email issue behind her. Even so, through her lawyers, she declined to be interviewed by the State Department’s inspector general as part of his review. So did several of her senior aides.
A spokesman for Ms Clinton did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The report broadly criticized the State Department as well, saying that officials had been "slow to recognize and to manage effectively the legal requirements and cybersecurity risks" that emerged in the era of emails, particularly those of senior officials such as Ms Clinton.
It said “longstanding systemic weaknesses” in handling electronic records went “well beyond the tenure of any one secretary of state”, but the body of the report focused on the 30,000 emails that Ms Clinton sent and received on her private server.
The report did not delve deeply into the issue that has become the focus of the FBI’s investigation – the references in dozens of emails to classified information, including 22 emails that the CIA considered “top secret”.
But it called into question the security risk of using a private server for what were clearly sensitive discussions of the nation’s foreign policy. It noted Ms Clinton sent or received most of the emails that traversed her server from a mobile device, her BlackBerry.
Security and records management officials told the inspector general's office that "Secretary Clinton never demonstrated to them that her private server or mobile device met minimum information security requirements," the report said. The report also disclosed an attempt to hack into Ms Clinton's server in January 2011. It said a "nondepartmental adviser" to Bill Clinton – apparently Bryan Pagliano – informed the department that he had shut down the server because "someone was trying to hack us and while they did not get in I didn't want to let them have a chance".
The attack continued later that day, prompting another official to write to two of Ms Clinton's top aides, Cheryl Mills and Jake Sullivan, to warn them not to send Ms Clinton "anything sensitive".
She explained that she would “explain more in person”.
– New York Times