At least 30 email threads since 2009 immediately deserve that designation based on the context in which they were written, according to Reuters

Reuters's review of Clinton's public State emails would undermine her presidential campaign's claims that she never sent or received messages that had already gotten classified status.

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The report found that the email chains in question included “foreign government information,” or any information provided by overseas officials in confidence to their U.S. equivalents.

Such communications are “presumed” classified, it said, as both a national security precaution and a safeguard of the diplomatic process and its integrity.

Reuters said Friday it had uncovered at least 17 emails sent by Clinton during her tenure at State that would possibly qualify for classification given they contain “foreign government information.” State Department spokesman Alec Gerlach disputed the analysis in a statement issued later Friday. “We do not have the ability to go back and recreate all of the various factors that would have gone into the determinations,” Gerlach said, adding that Reuters was making “outlandish accusations.”

The U.S. government deems messages “classified” in this way regardless of whether they are written or spoken correspondences, Reuters added.

“It’s born classified,” said J. William Leonard, former director of the Information Security Oversight Office between 2002 and 2008.

“If a foreign minister just told the secretary of State something in confidence, by U.S. rules that is classified at the moment it’s in U.S. channels and U.S. possession,” he told Reuters, adding that any State Department statements to the contrary were “blowing smoke.”