EMAIL DETAILS

Source: Top Clinton Aides Used Secret Email Accounts at State Dept.

http://gawker.com/source-top-clinton-aides-used-secret-email-accounts-at-1689246408

Source: Top Clinton Aides Used Secret Email Accounts at State Dept.

[image: Source: Top Clinton Aides Used Secret Email Accounts at State Dept.]

Hillary Clinton is defending her use of a private email address
<http://gawker.com/this-is-hillary-clinton-s-secret-email-hdr22-clintonem-1689178736>,
hosted at ClintonEmail.com, to conduct official State Department business
by claiming that her emails were captured by official @state.gov accounts
that other agency employees were instructed to use to contact her. But
according to a knowledgeable source, at least two other top Clinton aides
also used private email accounts to conduct government business—placing
their official communications outside the scope of federal record-keeping
regulations.

“Her top staffers used those Clinton email addresses” at the agency, said
the source, who has worked with Clinton in the past. The source named two
staffers in particular, Philippe Reines and Huma Abedin, who are said to
have used private email addresses in the course of their agency duties.
Reines served as deputy assistant secretary of state, and Abedin as
Clinton’s deputy chief of staff. Both rank among Clinton’s most loyal
confidantes, in and out of the State Department.

We were able to independently verify that Abedin used a ClintonEmail.com
address at some point in time. There are several email addresses associated
with Abedin’s name in records maintained by Lexis-Nexis; one of them is
huma@clintonemail.com. An email sent to that address today went through
without bouncing.

[image: Source: Top Clinton Aides Used Secret Email Accounts at State Dept.]

In an email to Gawker, Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill denied that Reines
was ever given, or ever used, a ClintonEmail.com address. “He has never had
one, not for communicating with anyone about anything,” he wrote. Merrill
did not respond, however, to questions about whether Reines used a private
account at a different provider, such as Yahoo! or Gmail, to conduct
official agency business. He also refused to address multiple questions
regarding how Abedin used her ClintonEmail.com address.

The use of private email addresses may explain the State Department’s
puzzling response to several FOIA requests filed by Gawker in the past two
years. One of our requests, in September 2012, sought correspondence
between Reines and a variety of reporters, including former BuzzFeed
reporter Michael Hastings, who engaged in a profanity-flecked exchange
<http://www.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeedpolitics/hillary-clinton-aide-tells-reporter-to-fuck-off>
with Reines in 2012. That request was confoundingly denied
<http://www.buzzfeed.com/rubycramer/gawkers-search-for-philippe-reines-emails-continues#.ecedJV6l5q>
on the grounds that the State Department had no record of Reines—whose job
it was to communicate with reporters—emailing Hastings or any other
journalists (Gawker is currently appealing the rejection). Another request
in June 2011 sought Abedin's email correspondence; the State Department
rejected that one as well, although we could not immediately locate the
denial letter to determine on what grounds.

“It pokes a big hole in her explanation,” the source added, referring to
spokesman Nick Merrill’s statement to Business Insider. “Like Secretaries
of State before her,” Merrill told the site
<http://www.businessinsider.com/how-hillary-clinton-used-her-personal-email-2015-3>
, she used her own email account when engaging with any Department
officials. For government business, she emailed them on their Department
accounts, with every expectation they would be retained.”

If you know any more about this, please get in touch <trotter@gawker.com>.

Email the author: trotter@gawker.com · Photo credit: Shutterstock
<http://shutterstock.com>


Eric D. Schwerin
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.com

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