WASHINGTON – The Department of Justice has been asked to open an investigation into the use of a personal email account by Hillary Rodham Clinton while she was secretary of state, after government investigators concluded that classified information may have been mishandled, U.S. officials said.
Inspectors general for the State Department and intelligence agencies asked that the investigation be opened after finding that Clinton’s private account potentially contained hundreds of classified emails. The New York Times first reported the request to the Justice Department.
Government officials initially characterized the referral as involving a potential criminal investigation. The Justice Department now says it was not criminal.
“The department has received a referral related to the potential compromise of classified information,” said its statement. “It is not a criminal referral.” Officials at the Justice Department declined to say anything further about it.
Such referrals are routine when investigators in the office of the inspector general for the intelligence community find evidence that classified information may have been sent using unsecured email. In this case, the evidence was referred to the FBI counterintelligence division, according to a U.S. official briefed on the review.
The official cautioned that the referral was an early step and far from any possible prosecution.
The Justice Department’s clarification, though, only raised a fresh round of questions. Regardless of whether criminal charges are involved, the compromise of classified information is generally considered a serious breach.
Clinton has said repeatedly she did not keep classified information on the account. Her campaign said in a statement that the emails in question were classified by the State Department retroactively, and thus Clinton violated no laws. It is unclear from the published findings of the inspectors general whether they found otherwise.
“We all have a responsibility to get this right,” Clinton said in brief remarks addressing the issue Friday during a speech on the economy. “I have released 55,000 pages of emails; I have said repeatedly that I will answer questions.”
Congressional Democrats released a letter Friday from the intelligence agencies’ inspector general that they said demonstrates that none of the material Clinton handled was marked classified. The memo said the investigators found no emails with “classification or dissemination markings” among the batch reviewed.
But the inspector general, I. Charles McCullough, also noted there were emails Clinton turned over to the State Department that did, indeed, contain classified information but were not marked as such.
“We note that none of the emails we reviewed had classification or dissemination markings, but some included . classified information and should have been handled as classified, appropriately marked and transmitted via a secure network,” the letter said.
The finding reflects new concerns about the way Clinton managed her email. Even if she took care not to accept or send messages marked as classified through her personal server, sensitive material does not always get appropriately marked immediately. McCullough reviewed a sampling of 40 of the 30,000 emails from the Clinton server and found four of them had information that should have been marked and handled as classified.
McCullough’s note also points out that Clinton’s attorney, David Kendall, still appears to have those emails on an unclassified system. “The 30,000 emails in question are purported to have been copied to a thumb drive in the possession of former Secretary Clinton’s personal counsel,” the letter said.
The development is likely to prove a considerable problem for the Clinton campaign. The former secretary of state’s email practices have been a constant point of attack for opponents and have fueled the perception among voters that Clinton is untrustworthy.
A House committee investigating Clinton’s handling of the terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012 that claimed American lives has focused its investigation on her personal email account. Its Republican chair has repeatedly accused Clinton of working to conceal information that could shed more light on how the State Department handled the attacks.
The State Department is under a court order to quickly review the 55,000 pages of emails that Clinton sent on the private account and release the pages that are unclassified. Some 3,000 pages were disclosed a few weeks ago, and the department is planning to publish another batch by the end of this month.
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