Justice Dept.: Clinton allowed to delete personal emails

Jayne O'Donnell | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Clinton's changing tone on emails: Dismissive to apologetic Since March, Hillary Clinton has slowly become more apologetic about her email controversy that has, at times, overshadowed her presidential bid. Video provided by Newsy

The Justice Department said in a court filing this week that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was allowed to delete personal emails from her personal server.

The Justice filing was in a lawsuit brought by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch.

"There is no question that former Secretary Clinton had authority to delete personal emails without agency supervision — she appropriately could have done so even if she were working on a government server," the Justice Department's civil division attorneys wrote.

Clinton, who is leading in national polls as she seeks the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, has been dogged by questions about her use of a private email account for government business.

She has said that she sent and received about 60,000 emails during the four years she was in the Obama administration. About half of which were personal and deleted and the others were turned over to the State Department.

Judicial Watch had requested a court order from the judge to ensure Clinton's emails were being preserved, but the Justice Department said there was no need for such an order given that Clinton had the right to delete personal emails and that those messages aren't subject to the public records law.

"Government agencies are not required to take steps to recover deleted material based on unfounded speculation that responsive information had been deleted," the government said in its brief. Justice also said Judicial Watch didn't present any evidence Clinton had mistakenly or intentionally deleted government records instead of personal emails.

The Justice Department brief said, "there is no legal basis in the (Freedom of Information Act) for requesters to obtain employees' personal records and, therefore, there is no legal basis for the court to order the State Department to preserve, or to take steps to preserve, the personal records of the former secretary or any other current or former federal employee," according to the Justice Department brief.

Clinton apologized for her use of the personal email server in an ABC interview on Tuesday.

“That was a mistake,” she said. “I’m sorry about that. I take responsibility.”

The apology was an about-face as Clinton had said the day before that she wouldn’t apologize because “what I did was allowed. It was allowed by the State Department. The State Department has confirmed that. I did not send or receive any information marked classified. I take the responsibilities of handling classified materials very seriously and did so.”

The next day, Clinton repeated that she did not send or receive classified material on the private account and that she is “trying to be as transparent as I possibly can” about her actions.

The department has been releasing batches of Clinton's emails since May. A number of messages have been classified since they were originally sent or received by Clinton.

Judicial Watch says it plans to release "new information" related to the Clinton email flap Monday at what it is calling its inaugural "Leadership Summit on Washington Corruption and the Transparency Crisis.”