Cheryl Mills, who served as chief of staff for Hillary Clinton at the State Department, plans to destroy all of her work-related emails after handing them over to the government agency.
The Washington Examiner reported that Mills has been instructed by her attorney to "delete" the emails and any copies that exist. Mills has been asked by the State Department to supply all of her work-related communications in the wake of reports about her former boss’ exclusive use of a private email system.
Mills will allegedly deliver her final work-related communications to State Monday, after which she will destroy her own copies.
"Following our production on Aug. 10, 2015, we have instructed her to delete any and all electronic copies in her possession," wrote Beth Wilkinson, the attorney representing Mills, in a letter to the State Department last Thursday.
The letter also insisted that Mills never maintained an email account on Clinton’s private server, despite reports that she used the same "clintonemail.com" domain as the former secretary of state.
A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by conservative watchdog Judicial Watch produced the correspondence between Mills and the State Department.
The group filed the lawsuit in order to obtain records about longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin that would inform her unique employment status at the State Department that allowed her to work for the Clinton Foundation and Teneo Strategies, a firm with ties to the Clintons, during her last six months under the Obama administration.
The State Department in response requested that Clinton, Abedin and Mills provide the agency with any government records in their possession.
Clinton has received consistent scrutiny since news broke in March of her use of a private email system while working in the Obama administration. After delivering about 30,000 work-related emails to the State Department and deleting the remaining 30,000 emails she deemed personal, Clinton allegedly wiped her private server clean.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has launched a criminal probe into the security of Clinton’s private email system in the wake of revelations about several messages containing classified information from multiple U.S. intelligence agencies.
Nevertheless, Clinton has denied sending or receiving classified information on her personal email account while at the State Department.