In a closed-door interview with the House Select Committee on Benghazi held earlier this year, the State Department’s highest ranking career official undermined two of Hillary Clinton’s main claims about her use of a personal email system.
According to a transcript of a Feb. 3 interview released on Monday and reviewed by The Daily Caller, Patrick Kennedy, the State Department’s under secretary for management, told the congressional panel that Clinton was required to return all of her work-related records to the State Department when she left office.
He also told the committee that it was “not commonly known” that Clinton used a personal email account.
Clinton stepped down as secretary of state in Feb. 2013. But she did not hand over her work-related emails until nearly two years later, in Dec. 2014. She only did that after the State Department sent her numerous letters requesting that she return the records.
In defending against accusations that she used an off-the-books email system in order to thwart transparency, Clinton has claimed that many people at the State Department and in the federal government knew that she used a personal email account.
But during a line of questioning from Benghazi Committee chairman Trey Gowdy, Kennedy said that Clinton’s use of a personal email account was not “a commonly known fact.”
Select Committee on Benghazi interview with Patrick Kennedy, Feb. 3, 2016
In defending her email practices, Clinton has said that 90 percent of her emails were captured in other State Department employees’ accounts. And while high-ranking officials within the State Department, including Kennedy, were aware that Clinton used a personal email account, her records were not made available for Freedom of Information Act requests. Staffers who processing those requests were among those who were unaware that Clinton used a personal email account.
One request for information about Clinton’s email accounts that was filed in Dec. 2012 was rejected for lack of responsive records. Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, was told about the request. And though she knew that Clinton used a personal account, she did not share information about Clinton’s email account.
Kennedy also told Gowdy that State Department policy required Clinton to return official records upon leaving office.
“She’s not allowed to take official records with her,” Kennedy told the South Carolina Republican.
Select Committee on Benghazi interview with Patrick Kennedy, Feb. 3, 2016
Clinton has largely avoided explaining why she did not immediately return her emails to the State Department. But she has spun that failure, claiming that she took an “unprecedented” step by providing the records in Dec. 2014. She has also claimed that her email practices were “allowed” by the State Department.
“Clinton responded to the State Department’s request by providing approximately 55,000 pages of her work and potentially work-related emails. She has also taken the unprecedented step of asking that those emails be made public. In doing so, she has sought to support the State Department’s efforts, fulfill her responsibility of record-keeping, and provide the chance for the public to assess the work she and officials at the State Department did during her tenure,” reads an “Email Facts” post on her campaign website.
Kennedy’s comments are perhaps the most clear-cut critique from a State Department official of Clinton’s email practices.
The State Department’s office of the inspector general recently criticized the former secretary of state in a report released last month. Despite Clinton’s claim that her email arrangement was allowed, the IG found that Clinton failed to seek approval from the State Department’s legal office as well as from its bureau of diplomatic security. Officials within that department told the IG that they would not have approved Clinton’s system if she had sought permission to use it because it posed a high security risk.
Clinton also failed to report at least two hacking attempts on her email account. Department policy requires employees to share such information.