Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Hillary's e-mail still exists: She admitted in March only that she set her server in 2014 "to retain only the most recent 60 days of e-mail"

An atypical report from last March had it that way here:

'Clinton's attorney has confirmed to a House committee on Benghazi that, after handing over work-related email to the State Department, the politician both "chose not to keep" personal messages and set a 60-day limit on what the server retains. In short, she effectively wiped it clean. There's no going back to mail from her Secretary of State days beyond the 30,490 messages on the record, or roughly half of what the server held during the period.'

But notice that Hillary wouldn't answer affirmatively yesterday that the server was wiped when she was directly asked. That's because it wasn't, and any such statement would conflict with her counsel's statement.

Hillary's position was stated clearly in March through her attorney's letter to Congressman Trey Gowdy here:

"After the review was completed to identify and provide to the Department of State all of the Secretary's work-related and potentially work-related emails, the Secretary chose not to keep her non-record personal e-mails and asked that her account (which was no longer in active use) be set to retain only the most recent 60 days of e-mail. To avoid prolonging a discussion that would be academic, I have confirmed with the Secretary's IT support that no e-mails from hdr22@clintonemail.com for the time period January 21,2009 through February 1, 2013 reside on the server or on any back-up systems associated with the server. Thus, there are no ... e-mails ... on the server for any review . . .."

That means that the e-mails are still recoverable. The unsaved mail would have to be overwritten actively to be truly deleted.

There has not been any statement by Hillary that the server was wiped. It's only been the assertion of the press, probably by design to buy time and throw investigators off the scent, and only by inference from her lawyer's letter, also intended to stymie further interest.

It also means that the server now revealed to be in Denver and seized by the FBI was likely the backup, and that the main one is still in the house located at 15 Old House Lane, Chappaqua, NY 10514, or perhaps it's really at 3067 Whitehaven Street NW, Washington, DC 20008.

Let's have some search warrants already, looking for evidence of obstruction of justice.