Transparency suffers: Clinton cited for misuse of e-mails

The State Department inspector general faulted former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for using her  private e-mail account to conduct official business during her four years at State. The report also criticizes her for not preserving Federal records on her personal account, ” At a minimum, Secretary Clinton should have surrendered all e-mails dealing with Department business before leaving government service and, because she did not do so, she did not comply with the Department’s policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act.” (Politico, May 25, 2016, by Rachael Bade, Josh Gerstein and Nick Gass)

Clinton only released some records in 2014 when the State Department began investigating the 2011 Benghazi, Libya attack that killed the U.S. ambassador.  Clinton asked aides to find official e-mails on her personal server and provide them to authorities. The e-mails submitted totaled half of the 60,000 in the system. The inspector general report said the e-mail effort was “incomplete” and cited particulars to back their claim. (The New York Times, May 26, 2016, by Steven Lee Meyers and Eric Lichtblau)