A State Department inspector general’s report that looked into Hillary Clinton’s email practices as secretary of state was “not a good report” for the Democratic presidential front-runner, her opponent, Bernie Sanders, said Sunday.
“It was not a good report for Secretary Clinton,” Sanders told CBS’ “Face the Nation,” adding that the 83-page report “is something that the American people, Democrats and delegates are going to have to take a hard look at.”
The damning report, which was released on Thursday, showed that Clinton did not obtain approval from anyone at the State Department to set up her private email system. And if Clinton had sought approval for it, officials with the agency’s information technology section said that the system likely would have been rejected because it posed a security risk.
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The report also revealed for the first time that two hacking attempts were made on Clinton’s server during her tenure. She has said that there is “no evidence” that the server was breached. Clinton did not inform State Department information security officers about the attempted hacks, though agency protocol states that she should have.
Other findings listed in the report raise questions about why Clinton set up the system. In one Nov. 2010 email, Clinton told her deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin that she was concerned about using a government email account because she did not want her emails to be “accessible.”
Compounding the mysteriousness of that email is the fact that it is not one of the 30,000-plus emails that Clinton gave the State Department in Dec. 2014. It is unclear if Clinton deleted that email from her account.
During his interview on Sunday, Sanders said that he does not plan to hammer on the IG report in his pitch to woo Democratic superdelegates. But he did suggest that they will be taking it into consideration when deciding who to support.
“They will be keeping it in mind,” he said.
Sanders has an almost impossible path to the Democratic nomination. His only hope is a huge switch of superdelegates from Clinton’s camp to his own.
The 74-year-old democratic socialist has shied away from focusing on Clinton’s email scandal. During a debate last year he famously said that “nobody cares about your damn emails.” Many observers have said that Sanders has missed a golden opportunity to hurt Clinton at the polls by refusing to seize on the story.