A new e-mail obtained by Judicial Watch appears to indicate that Secretary of State and Democratic Presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton may have known that she did not turn over all of her emails when she claimed she had “as far as she knew” and that did not use her clintonemail.com email system until March 2009.
After the State Department failed to comply with a March 2015 FOIA request filed by Judicial Watch, a conservative legal watchdog group, a federal judge ordered the State Department to begin releasing documents related to the use of wireless communication devices by Clinton and her staff during her time as Secretary of State.
The FOIA document release contains emails from February 2009 which Judicial Watch believes contradicts two of Clinton’s claims: (1) that she turned over all of her government emails to the State Department, and (2) she did not use her clintonemail.com email system until March 2009.
Clinton has repeatedly stated that the 55,000 pages of documents she turned over to the State Department in December 2014 included all of her work-related emails. Clinton declared under penalty of perjury that she had “directed that all my emails on clintonemail.com in my custody that were or are potentially federal records be provided to the Department of State, and on information and belief, this has been done.” However, according to Judicial Watch, her official campaign statement conveys a different figure:
On December 5, 2014, 30,490 copies of work or potentially work-related emails sent and received by Clinton from March 18, 2009, to February 1, 2013, were provided to the State Department. This totaled roughly 55,000 pages. More than 90% of her work or potentially work-related emails provided to the Department were already in the State Department’s record-keeping system because those e-mails were sent to or received by “state.gov” accounts (emphasis added).
Additionally, on February 13, 2009, Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s then-chief of staff, sent Clinton an email describing efforts by the National Security Agency to address demands for a secure Blackberry. That same day, Hillary Clinton, using her unsecured [email protected] account responded, “That’s good news.” This would directly contradict Clinton’s claim that she did not user her eponymous e-mail system until March 2009.
“So now we know that, contrary to her statement under oath suggesting otherwise, Hillary Clinton did not turn over all her government emails,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “We also know why Hillary Clinton falsely suggests she didn’t use clintonemail.com account prior to March, 18, 2009 – because she didn’t want Americans to know about her February 13, 2009, email that shows that she knew her Blackberry and email use was not secure.”
Hillary Clinton’s campaign has maintained that the Secretary only used her account for unclassified email and that no information in Clinton’s emails was marked classified at the time she sent or received them.
If Judicial Watch is right, this is one big “yikes” for Secretary Clinton.
[h/t JudicialWatch]
Correction: An earlier version of this article stated “What Judicial Watch is pointing out is the discrepancy between Clinton saying “all my e-mails” under the penalty of perjury and her campaign statement which says “more than 90%” of her work-related-mails were provided to the State Department.” That was not what Judicial Watch was pointing out. The campaign statement is saying that 90% of the emails that were provided were already on the system. The conservative organization was raising concerns that these new emails were sent in February 2009, and Clinton claimed that she hadn’t sent any email from her private server prior to March 2009.
