Clinton's email scandal: The basic facts

Clinton's email scandal: The basic facts

It's easy to get wrapped up in thinking the latest turn in the saga is the most important.Here's the basic rundown of what happened:

1. Clinton aides set up an email domain called Clintonemail.com in January 2009, just as Clinton was going through Senate confirmation hearings before becoming secretary of state. Throughout her tenure at State, Clinton exclusively used email addresses tied to that server for both her work and personal email, rather than using the government's system for her State Department messages and a private account for personal affairs. She personally paid a State Department official and former campaign aide, Bryan Pagliano, to maintain her server outside of his government duties.
2. In March 2013, a hacker called Guccifer distributed a series of emails from former Clinton White House aide Sidney Blumenthal to Clinton about security in Libya. The email address Blumenthal used for her was HDR22@clintonemail.com. That was the first public disclosure of her personal email account, and it was a flag for journalists and lawmakers that Clinton was conducting official business on a secret account.
3. In May 2014, the House of Representatives voted to create a Select Committee on the Events Surrounding the 2012 Terrorist Attack in Benghazi, Libya. The basic purpose was to examine and report on the government's policies and actions related to the assaults that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.
4. The White House told the State Department in August 2014 that records sought by the committee included emails about government business that were addressed to Clinton's personal email. The State Department then asked all former secretaries to turn over any email dealing with official business that was sent or received using a personal account.
5. Clinton gave the State Department email messages her team determined to be work-related on December 5. Her aides attempted to wipe her personal email from her server. She gave thumb drives containing her work emails to her lawyer, David Kendall.
6. In May 2015, federal District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras, presiding over one of a series of pending cases related to Clinton's email, ordered the State Department to begin producing batches of the 55,000 pages of Clinton's work messages on a rolling basis every month.
7. The State Department released the first batch of Clinton email on May 22.
8. The State Department official who oversees the production of documents under the Freedom of Information Act, Undersecretary Patrick Kennedy, battled the inspectors general of the State Department and the combined US intelligence agencies over who had access to review documents for the purposes of finding and censoring potentially classified information in the email set. Kennedy is also the official who oversaw embassy and consulate security at the time of the Benghazi attacks.
9. On July 23, the inspectors general told Congress they had notified the FBI that they had found four emails, out of 40 sampled, that contained information deemed to be classified. It was a security referral, designed to prevent any further potential mishandling of classified information, rather than a criminal referral. The emails were not marked "classified" at the time they were sent and received, but the IG for the intelligence community believed material contained within them had been designated classified at the time and remains classified. Two of the four emails contained "top secret" information, according to the intelligence IG, a finding that has since been affirmed by the CIA and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
10. After months of refusing to do so, and after the IG raised concerns about classified information residing on a server and thumb drives outside the government's control,Clinton's camp said she would give her server to the FBI in August. It had actually been in the possession of a firm called Platte River Networks, which was keeping it at a data center in New Jersey, since June. The FBI retrieved the server from the company.  Kendall also gave the thumb drives containing Clinton's work email to federal authorities.
11. High-level Clinton State Department aides Cheryl Mills, Huma Abedin, Jake Sullivan, and Philippe Reines have turned over personal emails containing business related to their government work to the State Department. Mills and Sullivan have testified before the Benghazi Committee behind closed doors. Pagliano exercised his Fifth Amendment right against possible self-incrimination.
12. More than 200 of the emails on Clinton's server have been retroactively classified already, and others have been flagged for further review.
13. Sen. Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, is investigating whether a change in Abedin's employment status — from full-time employee to part-time employee —created potential conflicts of interest because she was also paid by an international consulting firm, Teneo, co-founded by Bill Clinton's former top aide, Doug Band. Federal authorities also have investigated whether Abedin overcharged the government for her work.

Source Vox.com