Republicans have bashed Hillary Clinton after a report was released by the State Department's inspector general about her private email use. | Getty Republicans rip Clinton after IG email report

Republicans on Wednesday seized on the State Department inspector general's report finding that Hillary Clinton flouted agency rules with her private email server, saying it's just the "latest chapter in the long saga of Hillary Clinton’s bad judgment."

"This detailed inquiry by an Obama appointee makes clear Hillary Clinton hasn’t been telling the truth since day one, and her and her aides’ refusal to cooperate with this probe only underscores that fact," Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement. "Although Clinton has long claimed her practices were like those of other Secretaries of State and allowed, the report states she was in clear violation of the Federal Records Act."


Priebus pointed to the report's recounting of Clinton's "incredible 2010 email exchange" with aide Huma Abedin in which Abedin wrote, "we should talk about putting you on state email or releasing your email address to the department so you are not going to spam.” That exchange "only further underscores her motivation was secrecy, not convenience," Priebus said.

"The stakes are too high in this election to entrust the White House to someone with as much poor judgment and reckless disregard for the law as Hillary Clinton," Priebus said.

Plenty of lawmakers also weighed in on the report, which noted that the agency has long suffered from problems with electronic records but sharply criticized Clinton for how far she deviated from standard email practice.

“[A]t the very least, Secretary Clinton completely violated federal recordkeeping requirements while serving as our nation’s chief diplomat,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said in a statement.

He added that her actions posed a real risk to national security.

“This raises serious concerns about whether Secretary Clinton compromised national security secrets for what she describes as a matter of ‘convenience,’” he continued. “Moreover, no public official is above the law. Secretary Clinton’s actions were at best negligent and at worst harmful to our national security.”

While remarking that Clinton's emails were never the focus of the House Select Committee on Benghazi's investigation, Chairman Trey Gowdy pointed to his panel's role in pushing for greater transparency.

“There is only one reason why these facts are now available to the American people: thorough congressional oversight, including the Select Committee on Benghazi’s insistence that any truly comprehensive review of what happened before, during, and after the 2012 terrorist attacks in Libya must include public records from the former Secretary of State and her senior staff," Gowdy said in a statement. " While the emails have never been the focus of our investigation, it was necessary to obtain them, and this committee is the first and only one to do so. If anyone wonders why the investigation is not yet complete, the malfeasance and numerous problems identified in this report are Exhibit A, and prove the committee has faced serial delays from day one at the hands of public officials who sought to avoid transparency and accountability.”

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) called it a "very scathing report," suggesting that Donald Trump should focus on attacking Clinton for her email practices rather than dredging up decades-old attack lines.

"Now, this is not coming from some right-wing group," he said on MSNBC's "Andrea Mitchell Reports." "This is coming from, again, an inspector general appointed by the president. I know he's independent. But again, we're not talking about anybody from the right wing or any conservative or any Republican. This is an independent report coming out by an individual appointed by the President of the United States."

Responding to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) statement that Clinton acted out of "good conscience," House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffez (R-Utah) expressed surprise that his colleague could reach such an assessment.

"I have not gone through every word of this report but on the top-line issues of concern, she didn't answer questions, nobody has been disciplined at the State Department for lack of compliance and when you cannot interview the actual person, that says a lot about where they are going with it," Chaffetz told Fox News, referring to Clinton herself. He continued, "I’d like to have that (the FBI investigation) concluded sooner rather than later. I think that’s fair to the secretary and to the American people trying to make some vital decisions, but if you're trying to clean up your record, you would go and sit with the inspector general to do that and in this case, Secretary Clinton refused to do it."

Meanwhile, Clinton's allies quickly rushed to her defense.

“This IG report states in its conclusion that every single secretary of state did the same thing, and I have it here. I’m not reading it. I wanna show your viewers. This is the conclusion,” Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) told CNN. “They don’t even mention Hillary’s name. They basically say the Department of State and the Office of the Secretary since Colin Powell did not follow the exact rules of preserving the electronic communications so I think that’s the key here for Hillary.”

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, responded to the report by remarking that its findings pointed to the need to "remedy the long-term departmental deficiencies that have been identified." Rather than engaging in partisan attacks, the Clinton supporter suggested in a statement, Congress could "achieve something productive, rather than to continue politicizing a systemic problem that has confronted both parties as the State Department has grappled with the need to maintain cyber-security and efficiency in an era of fast-changing events and ubiquitous electronic communications."

Rachael Bade contributed to this report.

