FBI investigators have successfully recovered a trove of personal and work-related emails that Hillary Clinton said had been deleted from her private home-based server that she used exclusively during her time as Secretary of State, Bloomberg News reported late Tuesday, citing a confidential source.
The FBI has been investigating how and why classified information ended up on Clinton's home-brew server, which was not equipped to handle such sensitive data. Internal watchdogs have already revealed that some of the emails were classified as "top secret" at the time they were sent, and some fear that foreign governments and hackers may have been able to steal the information.
In December, nearly two years after leaving office, Clinton turned over some 30,000 work-related emails to the State Department for archiving, and she deleted about 30,000 more that she unilaterally deemed personal in nature. Clinton said that those emails were mostly related to her daughter Chelsea's wedding, yoga routines and condolence messages. However, many suspect that she may be hiding something more troublesome.
Those emails were thought to have been completely wiped from the server and forever lost, but one government official told The New York Times that it was not difficult to recover the messages. It's not yet clear how many emails have been retrieved, and it's possible that the Democratic presidential front-runner's private correspondence could eventually be released publicly, according to Bloomberg.
As the bureau extricates the messages, agents are reportedly segregating personal messages and sending the work-related ones to lead investigators.
Clinton's presidential campaign spokesman, Nick Merrill, told Fox News that Clinton's team "will always cooperate with the FBI," and that they do not know "what the FBI has, and doesn't have" regarding the investigation, which has been described by some sources as criminal in nature.
The FBI's "A-team" is reportedly conducting an "extremely serious" investigation into whether Clinton violated a section of the Espionage Act - 18 US Code 793 - which pertains to "gathering, transmitting or losing defense information," as HNGN previously reported.
Clinton has maintained that she never sent or received information that was marked classified at the time, but some say that she should have known based on the detail of the material that it was automatically considered classified.
Bloomberg's source said that the probe is expected to last several more months, which is bad news for her presidential bid, as she has already taken a significant hit in the polls, especially in terms of her perceived trustworthiness. It's also possible that she could face legal action for her email usage.
