Hillary Clinton Violated State Department Policy For Nearly Six Years, Official Says

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — Hillary Clinton was in violation of State Department rules governing the use of non-governmental email accounts during her entire tenure as secretary of state, ABC News has learned.

A senior State Department official tells ABC News that under rules in place while Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state, employees could only use private email accounts for official business if they turn those emails over to be entered into government computers. This policy is still in place.  

Until the private emails are entered into government computers, the official says, an employee is in violation of the rules.

Mrs. Clinton used a private email account for her entire tenure as secretary – and did not even have a government-issued email.  Mrs. Clinton did turn over some 55,000 pages of emails to be entered into government computer systems late last year, nearly two years after she stepped down from the State Department.

If Mrs. Clinton has now turned over all emails related to official business, she would be in compliance with State Department rules, an official said.  But there is no way to independently verify that she has done that.  

Mrs. Clinton’s spokesman says she has turned over about 90 percent of the emails she wrote as secretary of state, withholding only those that were strictly personal and not covered by the policy.

State Department email rules became an issue while Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state.

One of Mrs. Clinton’s ambassadors was criticized by the Department’s inspector general in a 2012 report for using private email.

“It is the Department’s general policy that normal day-to-day operations be conducted on an authorized information system, which has the proper level of security controls,” the Office of Inspector General wrote in the 2012 report.

The IG report warns that the use of non-governmental email accounts “increases the risk” of security breaches and the “loss of official public records as these systems do not have approved record preservation or backup functions.”

Clinton established her own private email network based out of her Chappaqua, New York, home, where aides say she has personally preserved all messages before turning them over.

Mrs. Clinton tweeted late Wednesday that she has asked the State Department to publicly release all the emails she turned over, but has otherwise remained silent on the controversy.

Back when she was last ran for president, Mrs. Clinton was quite vocal about other government officials who use private emails which circumvent automatic government archiving.  

“Our Constitution is being shredded. We know about the secret wiretaps, the secret military tribunals, the secret White House email accounts,” she said at an event in 2007, indirectly indicting the Republican administration. “It’s a stunning record of secrecy and corruption, of cronyism run amok.”

At least one Democrat — a supporter of Vice President Biden — lashed out at Mrs. Clinton’s email practices in an interview on CNN.

“Is that what we really want in a presidential candidate?” former South Carolina Democratic Chairman Dick Harpootlian said in an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN.  “Who the hell’s running this campaign?”

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