The State Department is working on releasing to the public official emails that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton kept on a private server during her time in office.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo appeared on Fox News’ “The Daily Briefing” on Friday afternoon with host Dana Perino and announced that State Department officials were working on releasing Clinton’s emails “as fast as we can.”
“We’ve got the emails. We’re getting them out. We are going to get all this information out so the American people can see it,” Pompeo told Perino. “You’ll remember, there was classified information on a private server, should never have been there. Hillary Clinton should never have done that. It was unacceptable behavior.”
“It’s not the kind of thing that leaders do,” Pompeo added. “They don’t put that kind of information out, and you can see whether it’s Russia or China or Iran or the North Koreans who want to get their hands on this kind of information. Classified information needs to stay in the right places. Secretary Clinton, when she was here at the State Department, did not do that.”
Clinton held over 60,000 emails sent or received on a private email server during her time as secretary of state. About half of those she eventually turned over to the State Department, which the department then largely published. Clinton erased the other half of her emails, which she or her own team of lawyers dubbed personal and not relevant to government business. The deleted emails should still exist on the other server involved in each communication, however.
In his Fox News interview, Pompeo was not clear what emails he had or planned to release. He said that the department would not release any information that would place Americans or U.S. intelligence assets in harm’s way.
“I’ve been at this a long time with President Trump for four years now, almost. I’ve never seen him do anything that would put any kind of asset, any kind of one of our officers in any harm’s way. He wouldn’t do that. We’ll get the information out that needs to get out and we’ll do it in a way that protects the intelligence sources that we need to protect,” Pompeo said.
When asked about a timeline for the emails’ release, Pompeo suggested that some may drop before the election, which is in 25 days.
“We’re doing it as fast as we can. I certainly think there will be more to see before the election,” Pompeo said.
Here’s Mike Pompeo on Fox News saying he has Hillary Clinton’s emails (unclear which ones) and plans to publicly release them before the election. pic.twitter.com/TQjfksQd3u
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 9, 2020
The State Department concluded an investigation into Clinton’s private email server in September 2019, flagging hundreds of security violations. Hundreds of emails that Clinton had kept on the private server outside of the State Department contained classified information. The results of the investigation were revealed in a State Department letter to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-IA) in October 2019.