The State Department repeatedly used unsecured communications for classified information, according to a new report from watchdog group Judicial Watch, which also found multiple examples of Clinton Foundation donors receiving special treatment from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's staff.
The report released on Wednesday contained 1,606 pages of documents sent to Judicial Watch from the State Department through a May 15, 2015 Freedom of Information Act request. The documents contained unsecured emails from Clinton's then-deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin's non-government account.
The emails showed Clinton and her staff expressing interest in visiting Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.
The documents show 91 emails exchanges from Clinton that had not been previously turned over to the State Department. Clinton turned over 55,000 pages of emails from her unsecured private account, which she used to conduct State Department business, to the agency last year. She claimed that, "as far as she knew," all of her government emails were turned over to the State Department.
As of Judicial Watch's latest report, at least 530 previously unknown emails exchanges that Clinton failed to turn over to the State Department have been revealed.
One example of Clinton playing favors to her donors occurred in 2009:
On April 12, 2009, Miguel Lausell, a Puerto Rican telecom executive who reportedly donated $1 million to the Clinton Presidential Library and was a member of the Clinton Global Initiative, made a request of Abedin through Clinton Foundation executive Doug Band to push for the appointment of someone to become US ambassador to the Dominican Republic.
Two previously undisclosed email exchanges between Clinton and her staff revealed she was quite particular about her hotel accommodations, Judicial Watch reported:
On November 14, 2011, Abedin tells Clinton she's going to have to stay at a "horrible Sheraton," where President Obama would be staying, and asks if she's open to another hotel. Clinton responds that "it would be hard not to be in same hotel as POTUS so try to get best option there."
On November 30, 2011, Abedin tells Clinton she'll have to stay at a "second tier hotel" in Burma because "the nice hotel owner was problematic." The "second tier hotel" room is a suite with "a room nearby large enough to accommodate more people."
In another email exchange with her staff, Clinton was upset Cheryl Mills and Bill Burns were unable to attend a photo shoot and their absence would lack diversity for the photo op:
On February 26, 2010, noting the absence of Mills and Bill Burns, Clinton tells Abedin that "the whole point" of a photo shoot that day "is to show a team that is diverse in every way. That won't happen and I am worried about that."
Clinton came under fire during the 2016 presidential campaign for using a non-government email on a private server to send and receive classified information during her tenure at the State Department.