One of the much-bandied aspects of the Hillary Clinton Emailgate “scandal” has been the former secretary of state’s insistence that her use of personal email at the State Department was “allowed,” and copious amounts of reporting that would seem to contradict that. This talking point has been a consistent part of Hillary’s defense ever since she first addressed her use of personal email:

Hillary’s claim that her personal email use was “allowed” at the State Department has been derided by critics, who point to a May report by the Office of the Inspector General that confirms no one ever gave Hillary Clinton specific permission to use personal email, nor did she ever seek it. “OIG found no evidence that the Secretary requested or obtained guidance or approval to conduct official business via a personal email account on her private server,” that report said, and gave examples of State Department communications expressing concern over personal email use. That report even went so far as to state that had Hillary Clinton asked for permission to handle her email this way, that permission would have been denied.

What it did not do, however, is demonstrate that personal email use was not allowed, and one of many buried pro-Hillary leads from the recently-released FBI notes from the “Emailgate” investigation is that Hillary was, in fact, right all along when she said her personal email use “was allowed.” From page 11 of the FBI report (emphasis mine):

While State policy during Clinton’s tenure required that “day-to-day operations [at State] be conducted on [an authorized information system],” according to the REDACTED the Bureau of Information Security Management, REDACTED there was no restriction on the use of personal e-mail accounts for official business.

There’s a legitimate discussion to be had over whether the phrase “was allowed” is too cute, and if I had been advising Hillary Clinton at the time, I’d have recommended using a term with considerably less salesmanship, but the fact that “there was no restriction on the use of personal e-mail accounts for official business” makes what Hillary said true. For some reason, that part of the report hasn’t gotten the attention that others have. Lots of reporters read Mediaite, though, so maybe that will change.

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