'OIG identified more than 90 Department employees who periodically used personal email accounts to conduct official business'
Hillary Clinton and other former secretaries of state broke policies regulating email usage, according to a report released Wednesday morning by the State Department's Inspector General, and conservatives are ecstatic.
"The report examined the email practices of five U.S. secretaries of state and found that there was 'a limited ability to retrieve email records, inaccessibility of electronic files, failure to comply with requirements for departing employees, and a general lack of oversight,'" ABC News reports, adding the report also states Clinton "should have preserved federal records she created and received on her personal account, and that sending emails from the personal account to other employees at the department was 'not an appropriate method of preserving' federal records."
Republicans are gleeful.
"This detailed inquiry by an Obama appointee makes clear Hillary Clinton hasn't been telling the truth since day one, and her and her aides' refusal to cooperate with this probe only underscores that fact," Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement. "Although Clinton has long claimed her practices were like those of other Secretaries of State and allowed, the report states she was in clear violation of the Federal Records Act."
RNC criticizes Clinton's "bad judgment" after State Dept report on email practices released: https://t.co/VkJzJuHph4 pic.twitter.com/OZjcIN4QsQ
— ABC News (@ABC) May 25, 2016
The RNC is far from the only ones jumping for joy, Politico reports.
Top GOP Benghazi hunter Rep. Trey Gowdy took credit for the email report, announcing there is "only one reason why these facts are now available to the American people: thorough congressional oversight, including the Select Committee on Benghazi's insistence that any truly comprehensive review of what happened before, during, and after the 2012 terrorist attacks in Libya must include public records from the former Secretary of State and her senior staff."
House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffez told Fox News, "I have not gone through every word of this report but on the top-line issues of concern, she didn't answer questions, nobody has been disciplined at the State Department for lack of compliance and when you cannot interview the actual person, that says a lot about where they are going with it," as Politico reports. "I'd like to have that (the FBI investigation) concluded sooner rather than later. I think that's fair to the secretary and to the American people trying to make some vital decisions, but if you're trying to clean up your record, you would go and sit with the inspector general to do that and in this case, Secretary Clinton refused to do it."
Having read the IG's report, Mother Jones points to these conclusions quoted from it:
OIG discovered anecdotal examples suggesting that Department staff have used personal email accounts to conduct official business....OIG identified more than 90 Department employees who periodically used personal email accounts to conduct official business....
"State's technology is so antiquated that NO ONE uses a State-issued laptop and even high officials routinely end up using their home email accounts to be able to get their work done quickly and effectively."
On Twitter a response from Louisiana's David Vitter:
New report proves Clinton violated State Dept. email policies. Shines light on Clinton's blatant abuse of office. https://t.co/72eepJqTGS
— David Vitter (@DavidVitter) May 25, 2016
Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license
See a mistake? Email corrections to: [email protected]
