The FBI has reportedly recovered emails that former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said were wiped from her server because she deemed them personal.
According to Bloomberg news service, citing a source familiar with the investigation, the FBI is examining the server to see whether classified data was mishandled, a process that could take months.
An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment, and it wasn’t clear how many of Mrs. Clinton’s “personal” emails had been recovered.
Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill told Bloomberg only that the campaign had “cooperated to date and will continue to do so, including answering any questions about this that anyone including the public may have.”
When she became secretary of state in 2009, Mrs. Clinton rejected using the regular State Department email system, instead setting up a server at her home in New York and issuing herself and some close confidants accounts on that server. She kept those messages secret until the congressional probe into the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attacks learned about them, and demanded she return the emails, which are official government records.
In December, nearly two years after she left office, she complied. But that means that for nearly six years, the State Department was unable to properly fulfill subpoenas, open-records requests and investigative demands from Congress, thanks to Mrs. Clinton’s unique email arrangement.
Mrs. Clinton has said she followed the law as it was written, which gives her the ability to decide which emails are public business and which are purely private.
She said she deleted some 30,000 messages she deemed private, and wiped the server clean to prevent them being recovered.
The FBI now has control of the server and flash drives Mrs. Clinton’s lawyer had with the emails on them.
• Stephen Dinan contributed to this report.
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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