The New York Times broke a story about two inspectors general demanding the Department of Justice open a criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email system during her time as secretary of state, a report that the publication quietly altered a short time later.
Politico reported that the Times made two significant alterations to the exclusive story Thursday night, both of which appear to shift blame from Hillary Clinton in the controversy.
In the original first paragraph of the piece, the Times described the criminal investigation requested by the inspectors general as being "into whether Hillary Rodham Clinton mishandled sensitive government information on a private email account she used as secretary of state."
In the updated piece, the line instead reads "into whether sensitive government information was mishandled in connection with the personal email account Hillary Rodham Clinton used as secretary of state."
The Times also changed the headline of the piece from "Criminal Inquiry Sought in Hillary Clinton’s Use of Email" to "Criminal Inquiry Is Sought in Clinton Email Account," again rendering the blame for the potential email misuse nebulous.
Neither change was noted for readers in an update or correction.
According to the piece, senior officials confirmed to the Times that the inspectors general requested the probe after they concluded that Clinton’s personal email account contained "hundreds of potentially classified emails," according to a memo written on June 29 by undersecretary of state for management Patrick F. Kennedy.
The Justice Department has not made a decision on the requested probe.
The Times, which first broke the story about Clinton’s exclusive use of a private email account while at the State Department, has previously been monetarily linked to the Democratic presidential candidate.
The Washington Free Beacon reported earlier this year that a private fund controlled by Bill and Hillary Clinton donated $100,000 to the New York Times’ charitable fund in 2008, the same year that the publication endorsed Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary that she eventually lost to then-Sen. Barack Obama.
UPDATE 4:15 P.M.: Times reporter Michael Schmidt said Friday that the Clinton campaign had expressed "reasonable" complaints about the original story which prompted the publication to make the changes. The Times also tacked this correction onto the end of the story:
An earlier version of this article and an earlier headline, using information from senior government officials, misstated the nature of the referral to the Justice Department regarding Hillary Clinton’s personal email account while she was secretary of state. The referral addressed the potential compromise of classified information in connection with that personal email account. It did not specifically request an investigation into Mrs. Clinton.