Hillary Clinton didn't use a government email while serving in the Obama administration

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hillary clinton

REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton checks her PDA upon her departure in a military C-17 plane from Malta bound for Tripoli, Libya October 18, 2011.

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Hillary Clinton only used a personal email account while serving as secretary of state in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2013, State Department officials told The New York Times.

"Mrs. Clinton did not have a government email address during her four-year tenure at the State Department," Michael Schmidt reports. "Her aides took no actions to have her personal emails preserved on department servers at the time, as required by the Federal Records Act."

When the State Department asked for records, Clinton's advisers handed over 55,000 pages of emails after they reportedly "decided which ones to turn over." Clinton's team also handed over about 900 pages regarding the September 11, 2012 attack on the US consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya.

The Times notes that it is unclear what encryption or other security measures Clinton may have used on her private email account.

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"I can recall no instance in my time at the National Archives when a high-ranking official at an executive branch agency solely used a personal email account for the transaction of government business," Thomas S. Blanton, the director of the National Security Archive, a group based at George Washington University that advocates government transparency, told The Times.

Clinton, the Democratic presidential front-runner in 2016, has been criticized for her finances, including her six-figure speaking fees and her foundation's fundraising practices while serving as secretary of state.

Check out the full report at the New York Times >

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