Current Democratic presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a surprise announcement Tuesday. She has decided to prove there were no problems with her digital security procedures by turning over both her private server and the thumb drive containing copies of her emails to the U.S. Justice Department.
The decision to release the server and the thumb drive to federal authorities was made public by a spokesman for Clinton’s presidential campaign late Tuesday afternoon.
More on Hillary Clinton’s decision to to turn over private email server to feds
Clinton’s rather late call to turn over her private email server is another twist in an ongoing political hot potato that just won’t go away. The ex-Secretary of state has pushed back for months against Republican leaders in Congress who have said she should give server to a third party to verify her claims she had given the State Department all of her work-related email messages.
Hillary Clinton has testified that the server was wiped clean of more than 31,000 emails that involved personal matters such as wedding plans, vacations and details regarding physical conditioning and workouts.
However, no matter how many assurances she makes, the issue will still not go away, and some Democrats worry that her email practice of using a private account for her official emails is a big reason polling indicates less people see her as honest and straightforward.
The campaign team has worked to lay the controversy to rest on multiple occasions. Following a request from the State Department at the end of last year, Hillary Clinton has turned over close to 55,000 pages of emails, everything in her possession that was related to the job. Moreover, Clinton requested that the State Department make the emails public in order to maximize transparency about the entire affair.
At a presser in March of this year, Hillary Clinton commented that she used a private email system because she wanted the convenience of carrying just one personal device. She also claimed that she did not send or receive classified government information on her private email account. More recent analyses of the Clinton email messages, however, suggests that at least some of the messages involved references to or discussions of classified materials.
At the March news conference at the United Nations, she commented that the server “will remain private…,” indicating that, at the time, she had no plan to release it.
Statement from Republican Senator Grassley
“It’s a welcome development, but it’s hard to believe that the Hillary Clinton private server and the thumb drives in the possession of Ms. Clinton’s personal lawyer have just recently been turned over to the authorities,” noted Republican Senator from Iowa Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, commenting on Clinton’s announcement regarding the private email server. “That’s a long time for top secret classified information to be held by an unauthorized person outside of an approved, secure government facility,” Senator Grassley, who has been looking into the precautions taken to secure any classified material on Clinton’s email system, continued.
