Clinton denies sending classified info from private server

WINTERSET, Iowa — Hillary Clinton said she is confident none of the emails she sent or received using her private email server while secretary of state contained information that was classified when she sent them.

Clinton, speaking to reporters Saturday after a presidential campaign event here, said she has “no idea” which are the four emails an inspector general review has determined were classified “secret” at the time.


“I am confident I never sent nor received any information that was classified at the time it was sent and received,” Clinton said. “What I think you’re seeing is a very typical kind of discussion to some extent, disagreement among various parts of the government over what should or what should not be publicly released.”

Clinton went on to say that she turned over 55,000 pages of emails to help the State Department, which had asked all living former secretaries to do the same in order to help with their record-keeping efforts. Clinton then said it was her own desire for transparency that had led to the arguments over levels of classification.

“Then I said, ‘Well let’s make it public.’ If I just turned it over, we would not be having this conversation, but when I said, ‘Hey I want this to be public’, it has to go through the FOIA process.

“That’s what’s going on here. I’m going to continue to say I want it to be made public as soon as it possibly can. And we will do whatever we can to try to get that process to move along,” she said.

Reports surfaced late this week that an inspector general review had found that at least four emails Clinton had kept on her server were classified “secret” at the time — a finding that calls into question her assertion in March that she took care to avoid sending classified materials.

News of the inspector general’s review was first reported late Thursday night by the New York Times — prompting a furious pushback from the Clinton campaign. The Times altered its initial story after complaints from the Clinton camp, along with the Justice Department’s clarification that the inspector general had not requested a criminal investigation.

Clinton said the question over classification is a common disagreement in the government.

“[T]he argument is over ‘this should’ve been done’ or ‘this now should be done.’ That has nothing to do with me. That is a discussion among various agencies within the government,” Clinton said. “This material is all on the unclassified system of the State Department. If we were not asking for it to be made public, there would not be a debate. This is all about my desire to have transparency and make the information public.”

Asked whether she thought the Justice Department should investigate the emails, Clinton said it’s up to them.

“They can fight or argue over it, that’s up to them. I can just tell you what the facts are, and there’s nothing contradicted in those facts I’m telling you by anything anyone has said so far,” she said.