The State Department under Hillary Clinton issued instructions to employees that they were not to use personal email to conduct government business, even as the secretary of state continued to operate with her own personal email on a private server run from her house,
Fox News reported.
An unclassified cable was sent to diplomatic and consular staff in June 2011 with Clinton's electronic signature telling employees to "avoid conducting official Department business from your personal email accounts."
The message also said that employees should not "auto-forward Department email to personal email accounts which is prohibited by government policy," and it adds that violators would face disciplinary action.
In 2012, an inspector general report criticized a former ambassador to Kenya, Scott Gration, in part for using private email for official business,
The Hill reported.
According to the report, he "willfully disregarded Department regulations on the use of commercial email for official government business."
Gration had distributed a self-written policy that permitted him and his staff to use private email for official business, the report added, and The New Republic reported that he worked from a bathroom which had an unsecured network, with staffers sitting on toilets for meetings, according to The Hill.
Gration resigned shortly before the report was released.
Clinton, however, did not face objections from the Obama administration about her use of personal email,
The New York Times reported.
One source with direct knowledge of how the State Department operated under Clinton said that it was not a secret that she communicated on her own address, and no one thought it was necessary for her to switch to an official account even though the arrangement shielded her emails from public records requests.
For her part, Clinton issued a statement saying she has asked the State Department to
release her emails and added, "I want the public to see my email."
But the controversy surrounding the revelations has deepened as lawmakers ratchet up the pressure for disclosure. On Wednesday, a congressional committee that is investigating the
2012 Benghazi attacks subpoenaed all of Clinton's emails related to Libya.
"Secretary Clinton's claim that she asked the State Department to release her emails is meaningless since they only have access to the emails she chose to provide them," Illinois Republican Rep. Peter Roskam, a member of the Select Committee on Benghazi, said,
according to The Washington Free Beacon.
"The Committee will use all tools at our disposal to ensure we obtain every relevant email, potentially including ones Mrs. Clinton, her political advisers and lawyers chose to hold back, as we compile a full and complete record of the facts on the Benghazi attacks," Roskam revealed.
Roskam described the situation as "Nixonian."
"The last time we saw a high government official seeking to edit their own responses was President [Richard] Nixon, and at least then he enjoyed the benefit of executive privilege," Roskam said, according to the Free Beacon.
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