WASHINGTON (AP) — The company that managed Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private email server says it has no knowledge that the server was “wiped,” which could mean that more than 30,000 emails Clinton says she deleted from the device could be recovered, according to a report in The Washington Post.
Clinton has said that personal correspondence sent and received during the four years she was secretary of state were deleted from the server. About as many emails pertaining to administration business have been turned over to the State Department, which is reviewing them and releasing them periodically by court order.
Deleting emails is not the same at wiping a server. Deleted emails often can be recovered from a device that has not been “wiped,” which PC Magazine defines as “a security measure when selling, giving away or retiring a computer. A file wipe completely erases the data from the hard disk.”
A spokesman for Platte River Networks, the Denver-based firm that has managed the system, said the company has no information indicating the server was wiped, the Post reported on its website Saturday. Platte River took over the device in June 2013, about four months after Clinton left the State Department, and turned it over to the FBI last month, the newspaper reported.
“All the information we have is that the server wasn’t wiped,” spokesman Andy Boian told the newspaper.
Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, said Saturday they will seek a review of the deleted emails if they can be recovered, the Post reported.
As she pursues the Democratic presidential nomination, Clinton has faced relentless questions and criticism regarding her use of a private email account for government business. The FBI has been investigating the security of Clinton’s email setup.
Clinton asserts that she had the right under government rules to decide which emails were private and to delete them, a claim the Justice Department supported in a recent filing with the U.S. District Court in Washington. The conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch is seeking access to her emails under a public records lawsuit.
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Ben-gha-zeeeee!
For the press and especially AP, WAPO and the NYT, this has crossed the line separating monomania from obsessive/compulsive disorder. “OMG, we may have yet another chance to uncover some sordid bit of gossip that will provide us with countless column yammering inches. Huzzah, Huzzah, Huzzah”
Oh, good dog! Just smash the damned thing to smitherines and be done with it!
Inded and why are we entitled to see her personal emails.
What utter incompetence by Hillary and her staff! If she believed she had a right to delete her personal emails (and she does), she should have done it thoroughly. From news reports, it appears that the server that she had before June 2013 (before the emails were migrated to a new server) was not wiped at all.
This almost certainly means that all 30,000 personal emails will be recovered, and perhaps published. Thus, Hillary will have her most private moments exposed, as well as give off the impression that she was hiding something.
The way the crappy media works, this will lead to months of headlines with the worst possible spin on the deleted emails – e.g. why didn’t she turn over that one? By the end, we will have more transparency about Hillary’s service in the State Dept. than of any other public official in history, and yet it will not lead to greater public trust in her, because of the impression that she unsuccessfully tried to hide the emails.