To end an event-filled political week, the State Department’s completed internal investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of her private email was released today. Findings were sent in a letter to Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) this week and released today, which found violations by 38 people, “some of whom may face disciplinary action.”
The Associated Press reported: “The investigation, launched more than three years ago, determined that those 38 people were ‘culpable’ in 91 cases of sending classified information that ended up in Clinton’s personal email.” Those 38 people “are current and former State Department officials but were not identified.”
According to Fox News, “the report, dated Sept. 13., was delivered to the office of Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa., who was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee until last year.” In the report was a summarized review of the handling of “classified information relating to Clinton’s private email server used during her tenure as the nation’s highest-ranking diplomat between 2009 and 2013.”
In conclusion, the report found:
While the use of a private email system itself did not necessarily increase the likelihood of classified information being transmitted on unclassified systems, those incidents which then resulted in the presence of classified information upon it carried an increased risk of compromise or inadvertent disclosure…
…While there were some instances of classified information being inappropriately introduced into an unclassified system in furtherance of expedience, by and large, the individuals interviewed were aware of security policies and did their best to implement them in their operations…
…Correspondence with the Secretary is inherently sensitive, and is therefore open for broad interpretation as to classification, particularly with respect to Foreign Government Information…There was no persuasive evidence of systemic, deliberate mishandling of classified information.
