A new Inspector’s General report revealed that Hillary Clinton’s private email exploited a loophole in the State Department’s Freedom of Information Act process.
** Pressure is building to prosecute the former Secretary of State.
Catherine Herridge reported:
FOX News reported:
Hillary Clinton’s unorthodox use of a private email account and personal server for government business exploited a loophole in the State Department’s FOIA, or Freedom of Information Act, process, according to the findings of the first Inspector General report to stem from her email scandal.
Congress asked the Office of Inspector General, the State Department’s independent watchdog, to investigate the issue following the revelation that Mrs. Clinton did not use a government email account while secretary of state.
Fox News reviewed the 25-page report and its findings before they were made publicly available.
The report reads in part:
“FOIA neither authorizes nor requires agencies to search for Federal records in personal email accounts maintained on private servers or through commercial providers (for example Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail.) Furthermore, the FOIA Analyst has no way to independently locate Federal records from such accounts unless employees take steps to preserve official emails in Department record keeping systems.”
The report strongly suggests that it relies on employees at all levels to follow the regulations, and when personal email is used, to forward copies to a State Department account so that it can be captured.
“Under current law and Department policy, employees who use personal email to conduct official business are required to forward or copy email from a personal account to their respective Department accounts within 20 Days.”
Clinton did not have a State Department email address to which she could forward message traffic from her personal account, and it remains unclear whether she provided all her State Department business emails to the State Department or federal courts, where FOIA lawsuits have been filed.
