House Speaker John A. Boehner on Tuesday urged Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton to “come clean” and turn over the private email server she used as secretary to state to the agency’s inspector general.
“Despite evidence to the contrary, Secretary Clinton continues to maintain that she never had classified email,” Mr. Boehner, Ohio Republican, told reporters at a weekly press conference on Capitol Hill.
“Now, let’s not be fooled here. Secretary Clinton is a former senator, a former secretary of State, she knows exactly how classifying material works,” he said. “At this point, the best thing for Mrs. Clinton to do is to come clean and just turn the server over to the IG at the State Department.”
Mrs. Clinton handled at least four emails that should have been labeled as classified documents, according to a report by the inspectors general for the State Department and the intelligence agencies. The matter has been referred to the Justice Department for investigation.
Mrs. Clinton has been dogged on the campaign trail by questions about her exclusive use of a private email account and a private email server while secretary of state, which shielded her official correspondence from Congress and from Freedom of Information Act requests.
She has insisted that she followed the rules and only used a private email account because it was more convenient for her than juggling two smartphones.
Nearly two years after she left office, and after a congressional probe learned about her account, she turned over about 30,000 messages that she deemed official business to the State Department and erased another 32,000 messages that she deemed personal.
At some point, she wiped clean the email server kept in her home in Chappaqua, New York, preventing any of the messages from being recovered.
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
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