Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks on stage in Harlem at the Apollo Theater on March 30. | Getty Clinton expressed worries about exposure of personal emails at State Dept. The worry came after her top aide said they needed to discuss putting Clinton on State's email system.

Hillary Clinton expressed concern in November 2010 about the risk of her personal emails becoming accessible after one of her top aides said they needed to discuss putting her on the State Department’s email system.

The revelation of the exchange between Clinton and Huma Abedin was included in a report from the State Department’s inspector general that was released to lawmakers on Wednesday.


The report concluded that Clinton violated the agency’s email rules when she chose to exclusively use a private email server during her four years at State Department and did not promptly turn over records after she departed the agency.

The document also included some details of an exchange between Clinton and Abedin, who both chose not to cooperate with the IG’s investigation.

“In November 2010, Secretary Clinton and her Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations discussed the fact that Secretary Clinton’s emails to Department employees were not being received,” the report said. “The Deputy Chief of Staff emailed the Secretary that “we should talk about putting you on state email or releasing your email address to the department so you are not going to spam.” In response, the Secretary wrote, “Let’s get separate address or device but I don’t want any risk of the personal being accessible.”

On Wednesday, Clinton’s campaign defended her decision not to cooperate with the IG's audit, arguing that they wanted to focus on responding to the separate and ongoing FBI probe of the matter.

“To our mind, it made sense to prioritize the review being conducted by the Justice Department and so, accordingly, Hillary Clinton has said since last August that she’ll be happy to sit with them at whatever point they approach her, which has not happened yet,” Clinton press secretary Brian Fallon told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “And she has similarly encouraged all of her aides to cooperate in every way with that Justice Department review.”

Nolan D. McCaskill contributed to this report.

