A conservative legal watchdog group has unearthed an email sent by former secretary of state Hillary Clinton in February 2009 from her private server, a discovery that raises questions about how many emails Clinton withheld in response to State Department requests.
The email, released Thursday by Judicial Watch and dated Feb. 13, 2009, also contradicts claims from the Clinton campaign that she did not use her "clintonemail.com" private server account prior to March 2009.
It contains an exchange between Clinton and one of her top aides, Cheryl Mills, about acquiring a secure BlackBerry through the National Security Agency for use at the State Department. Other emails released through Judicial Watch revealed that the NSA chose not to provide Clinton with the BlackBerry, though Clinton continued to use her private server for official business.
Clinton handed over around 55,000 pages of official emails to the State Department in December 2014 and said that she deleted near 32,000 that concerned personal topics such as yoga routines and family vacations. The former secretary of state has argued that she "fully complied" with the law and handed over all relevant work emails from her private server to the State Department. She has also said that she used her private email out of convenience.
Still, critics have questioned the self-policed nature of Clinton’s email handover and have argued that her server should have been given to a neutral third-party for inspection.
Clinton was embroiled in a similar situation in September when Obama administration officials discovered an email chain between Clinton and retired Gen. David Petraeus that dated back before her time as secretary of state. The chain was reportedly transferred from her Senate email onto the private server that she used as secretary of state.