Several email accounts belonging to top aides to Hillary Clinton handled top secret information that was recently found on the private, unsecured email server she used while heading the State Department.
Fox News, citing a government official, reported that a dozen or more email accounts--including those belonging to Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills, Jake Sullivan, and Philippe Reines--handled the top secret information. Both Abedin and Sullivan are senior aides on Clinton’s presidential campaign. The top secret intelligence also made its way onto the email account of Patrick Kennedy, the State Department’s under secretary for management.
A separate source disclosed that the number of accounts that handled the top secret information could reach as many as 30.
The State Department confirmed the presence of top secret information in 22 emails found on Clinton’s email server late last month. The emails--amounting to 37 pages--were withheld from the agency’s public release of Clinton’s communications because of their sensitive contents.
"The documents are being upgraded at the request of the intelligence community because they contain a category of top secret information," State Department spokesman John Kirby said on January 29.
The dozen or more email accounts belonging to Clinton aides had access to these emails, the government official told Fox News.
The State Department’s announcement last month marked the first time that the agency had acknowledged the presence of top secret information on Clinton’s server. Kirby said that the State Department was reviewing whether the information was classified at the time the messages originated on Clinton’s email.
Before the State Department announced that it would withhold the emails, the inspector general of the intelligence community sent a letter to lawmakers indicating that several dozen Clinton emails had been found to contain classified information, including intelligence from the government’s most secret "special access programs."
Clinton’s presidential campaign has described the revelations about her personal email use as the result of a partisan attack to damage her pursuit of the White House.
The former secretary of state’s email setup is under investigation by the FBI.