Remember how Hillary Clinton used a private homebrew email server to conduct official State Department business? Today—only hours before the agency is expected to release the next batch of Clinton’s emails, and just days before the Iowa caucuses—the sitting administration disclosed that 22 of those emails are now considered top secret, and thus exempt from release:
The Obama administration confirmed for the first time Friday that Hillary Clinton’s unsecured home server contained closely guarded government secrets, censoring 22 emails with material requiring one of the highest levels of classification.
As the Associated Press notes, this could very well contradict the argument (floated by Clinton and her surrogates) that the former Secretary of State “never sent or received information on her personal email account that was classified at the time.” Given the nature of the classification, the Obama administration is not required to explain what exactly the top secret emails were about.
The candidate, for her part, appears to be protesting the classification, which allows the government to withhold the entirety of the emails (as opposed to simply redacting certain portions of them). A spokesperson for Clinton’s campaign told NBC News that “we firmly oppose the complete blocking of the release of these emails. Since first providing her emails to the State Department more than one year ago, Hillary Clinton has urged that they be made available to the public. We feel no differently today.”
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via Gizmodo
A Big Ol’ Friday News Dump, Courtesy of Hillary Clinton’s Email Server