It’s the Server, Stupid

The State Department inspector general’s conclusion that Hillary Clinton violated federal records law should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the controversy. The IG report, released in late May, is devastating to Clinton's constantly shifting defenses of her misconduct. And while the inspector general does not opine on the legality of her home-brewed email server under federal criminal law, the report outlines the factual predicate for criminal prosecution.

Clinton's defense had long been that her email set-up was "allowed by the State Department." But the inspector general "found no evidence that the Secretary requested or obtained guidance or approval to conduct official business via a personal email account on her private server." And had she sought that approval, it would have been denied. The department's diplomatic security and information resource management offices "did not—and would not—approve her exclusive reliance on a personal email account to conduct Department business, because of the restrictions in the [department's policy manual] and the security risks in doing so."

But Clinton already knew that and had quietly abandoned her claim that the server was formally approved once someone finally challenged her on it. After months of implying that she had received official approval for her server, she admitted last fall to CNN's Jake Tapper that nobody had signed off on it. Instead, she retreated to a claim that it was "allowed under the rules of the State Department." Her insistence that it was allowed had always simply meant that she had allowed it. L'état, c'est Hillary.

Clinton's interpretation of governing law and regulations was wrong from the beginning, and the State Department inspector general flatly rejected it. "The requirement to manage and preserve emails containing Federal records has remained consistent since at least 1995," concludes the report. Despite the Clinton camp's insistence that records preservation rules were clarified only after she left office, the IG concludes that "records management requirements have always applied to emails exchanged on personal email accounts," provided those emails reflect the official business of the government.

The IG similarly rebuffed Clinton's suggestion that, since State Department employees were permitted to use private email on occasion to conduct official business, her exclusive use of her own private email server was permitted. Beginning in late 2005, the department's internal regulations required that ordinary day-to-day official business be conducted on official State Department servers and permitted private email use only where official servers were unavailable or impracticable. Yet, despite the fact that her emails regularly contained sensitive information (including both classified information and information marked as "Sensitive But Unclassified"), the IG found no evidence that Clinton ever sought to comply with these departmental security requirements.