Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has agreed to hand over her private email server to the FBI for examination after government investigators claim that two emails that passed through it contained classified information.
That info referenced satellite images and electronic communications, according to the Washington Post, and was reportedly found in emails originating from the CIA.
Although the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency says the information was classified, a State Department spokesman disputed this, saying that the top-secret designation was merely a recommendation and that the CIA information had not been marked classified at the time the emails were distributed. What's more, the official said, State Department staffers had “circulated these e-mails on unclassified systems in 2009 and 2011" before some of them were forwarded to Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time.
The public learned in March that Clinton had maintained a private email server from her New York home during her tenure as secretary of state throughout President Obama's first term in office.
“I saw it as a matter of convenience,” she said at the time. Because she couldn’t send personal emails on her government-issued phone, she set up the server using clintonemail.com as the domain to conduct personal correspondence.
Clinton has been accused by Republican lawmakers of using the server to hide her activity as secretary and bypass public records requests. She resisted handing over the server in March saying that it contained personal correspondence with her husband, former President Bill Clinton.
"I believe I have met all of my responsibilities, and the server will remain private,” she told reporters in March.
She did, however, turn over two thumb drives to the State Department containing about 30,000 emails that she said held work-related information. It was among a sampling of about 40 of these emails that investigators say they found the two emails containing classified information. The two thumb drives will now be turned over to the FBI for examination, along with the email server.
