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WASHINGTON, Mar 4: Hillary Clinton’s office has rejected claims that she may have violated American laws by exclusively using her personal email account for conducting official business when she was the US Secretary of State, saying appropriate records were preserved.
“Like Secretaries of State before her, she used her own email account when engaging with any Department officials. For government business, she emailed them on their Department accounts, with every expectation they would be retained,” Clinton’s spokesman Nick Merrill told PTI when asked about a New York Times report which alleged that she probably violated federal law by using her private email.
“When the Department asked former Secretaries last year for help ensuring their emails were in fact retained, we immediately said yes,” he said.
“Both the letter and spirit of the rules permitted State Department officials to use non-government email, as long as appropriate records were preserved. As a result of State’s request for our help to make sure they in fact were, that is what happened here,” he added.
As the department stated, it is in the process of updating its record preservation policies to bring them in line with its retention responsibilities, Merrill asserted.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters that the federal policy, as a general matter, allows individuals to use their personal email address as long as those emails are maintained and sent to the State Department.
“Very specific guidance has been given to agencies all across the government, which is specifically that employees of the Obama administration should use their official email accounts when they’re conducting official government business. However, when there are situations where personal email accounts are used, it is important for those records to be preserved consistent with the Federal Records Act,” he noted.
In fact, Obama signed into law a bill at the end of last year clarifying the guidelines for how those personal emails can be properly stored and maintained.
This is part of why the State Department has asked all of the previous Secretaries of State who have used any email as they were conducting official US business to send their emails to the State Department so they could be properly preserved and maintained, Earnest said. (PTI)
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