As Hillary Clinton has spent this week apologizing for using a personal email account as secretary of state, a group closely-aligned with her campaign is out with a new report defending the Democratic presidential candidate’s off-the-books email arrangement.
Correct the Record, which was founded by close Clinton ally David Brock and has been paid $275,000 by the Clinton campaign for “research,” insists that Clinton’s use of the private server and a personal email account as the nation’s top diplomat was a wise move in light of the numerous hacks carried out against the federal government’s computer systems.
But the pro-Clinton Super PAC’s defense of Clinton is curious given that she apologized earlier this week for not using an official state.gov email account.
“Yes, I should have used two email addresses, one for personal matters and one for my work at the State Department. Not doing so was a mistake. I’m sorry about it, and I take full responsibility,” Clinton wrote on Facebook. (RELATED: Hillary Takes Her Apology Tour To Facebook)
The group’s argument relies on claims made by the State Department and Clinton herself that the private setup was not infiltrated by state-sponsored hackers.
Correct the Record’s 12-page report begins:
Among the news media’s obsessive coverage of Hillary Clinton’s email practices, a simple fact has been lost. There is no evidence that Hillary Clinton’s personal email was ever breached. On the other hand, the U.S. government has been hacked on numerous occasions, compromising even the most sensitive of information.
The report compares Clinton’s email arrangement to what it insists is the federal government’s Swiss cheese-like setup.
From Edward Snowden’s theft of millions of classified national security documents, to WikiLeaks, to a hack of OPM that compromised personal information of more than 22 million people, the scope of recent breaches into private and top secret government servers is sweeping and well documented.
“Anyone who attempts to argue that the contents of Hillary Clinton’s email would have been more secure on a government server must contend with these facts,” the report reads.
The report quotes Clinton who said in March that her email system “had numerous safeguards.” (RELATED: Hillary’s IT Company Says Email Server Was Not ‘Wiped’ Clean)
“It was on property guarded by the Secret Service. And there were no security breaches.”
Also in March, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf also insisted that that there was “no indication that the email was compromised, the account was compromised or hacked in anyway.”
The security of Clinton’s email system has been a focal point of the scandal since it broke open in March. But it took on renewed significance last month when the FBI seized control of Clinton’s server. That move came after the Intelligence Community’s inspector general discovered that at least two emails containing highly classified information had traversed Clinton’s hardware.
In addition to insisting that her server was safe, Clinton has also claimed that she did not send or receive classified information. (RELATED: Hillary Refuses To Say Whether Or Not She Wiped The Server)
Numerous intelligence community and cybersecurity experts — as well as Edward Snowden, the exiled National Security Agency contractor — have asserted that Clinton’s email server was most likely breached by sophisticated hackers.