Hillary Clinton told a top deputy in 2010 that she wanted to prevent messages to and from her personal email account from being publicly accessible, according to a government report released on Wednesday.
Clinton has claimed that she exclusively used a personal email address for purposes of convenience. However, the report from the State Department’s inspector general suggests she was attempting to shield her communications from laws giving the public access to government information.
"I don’t want any risk of the personal [email account] being accessible," Clinton told top aide Huma Abedin in a November 2010 email.
She was responding to Abedin’s suggestion that Clinton begin using an official State Department email address or at least notify the department that she was using a personal address exclusively.
Clinton rejected the idea. "Let’s get separate address or device," she suggested.
Clinton continued using a personal email address for official State Department business throughout her tenure as secretary. The department’s IG concluded in its report that her email practices violated federal regulations on the maintenance of government records.
It also revealed that Clinton’s personal server had been "attacked" multiple times, despite Clinton’s claim that the server was never breached.
"Someone was trying to hack us and while they did not get in i didnt [sic] want to let them have the chance to," the official who maintained Clinton’s server told her in one email.
"We were attacked again so I shut [the server] down for a few min," he wrote later that day.
State Department officials did not review or sign off on security measures designed to prevent intrusions into Clinton’s personal email server, the IG revealed.