When former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held her press conference to address the email scandal that recently erupted, she left seven key questions unanswered.
In fact,
according to Politico, she may have made things worse when she admitted that almost 32,000 emails that were deemed personal were tossed by her team.
1. Did Clinton's team capture all her work-related email?
According to Clinton and the fact-sheet released following the press conference, there were a total of about 62,000 emails on her private server from her tenure in office.
Her team separated out what they deemed were work-related emails by searching for those with ".gov" email addresses as well as the names of more than 100 government officials, who did not have ".gov" email addresses. There were other searches as well, including terms such as "Benghazi" and "Libya."
However, nothing was said about whether her email correspondence included foreign officials.
2. Is it possible to recover Clinton's email that was deemed personal?
Clinton said during her press conference that she "didn't see any reason to keep" the emails that were deemed personal, but turned down the offer to have a third party examine the server, which Politico says implied that the personal messages might still be on the server.
Unless certain measures were taken, those personal emails still very likely exist. When Clinton said that the server, set up at her home in Chappaqua, New York, "had numerous safeguards" that likely meant that there were backup servers, data tapes or external hard drives where the data was saved.
3. Did any one at the State Department grant approval for Clinton to use a personal email account?
Clinton said that using a personal email account "was allowed by the State Department." However, there was a policy issued by the State Department in 2005 which said that "normal day-to-day operations [should] be conducted on an authorized" State Department system.
Some government officials have said that the email policy applied only to "sensitive but unclassified" email, while other reports describe the policy as a general directive.
At this point, no State Department spokesperson has answered whether or not Clinton was given approval to use a personal email account.
4. Why is it that Clinton's emails were requested by the State Department in October 2014 and not in 2013 when she left office?
Clinton didn't hand over her emails until December, but she left office in early 2013. State Department officials have said that there was no rule about how soon former government officials needed to hand over such items until recently. It is now required that government officials have 20 days from when they leave their positions.
5. Were there any classified messages sent or received on Clinton's private account?
"I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email. There is no classified material," Clinton said during her press conference Tuesday. "So, I’m certainly well-aware of the classification requirements and did not send classified material."
While the fact sheet released by Clinton's team says that classified information is on a separate network and couldn't have appeared on her email, experts say that classified information could have existed in the content of her emails because she knew about classified information. In addition, there is a broad definition about what is categorized as classified.
As the State Department filters through Clinton's emails, officials will be checking for any classified information, a spokesperson said.
6. Did both Clinton and former President Bill Clinton send emails to each other?
Clinton said Tuesday that "the server contains personal communications from my husband and me," but the former president's aides have said that he only sent two emails in his life — both while he was still in office.
According to Politico, this point needs further clarification.
7. Were Freedom of Information Act requests thwarted by Clinton's private email account?
"It was my practice to email government officials on their state or other .gov accounts so that the emails were immediately captured and preserved," Clinton said at her press conference.
However, those who advocate for more government transparency say that FOIA requests may have resulted in very little if Clinton's emails were primarily on a private server.
However, this could also be the case because of antiquated record-keeping rules in the federal government, which put the responsibility of maintaining printouts of what officials deem are important records, Politico added.
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