Newly revealed State Department emails show that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's longtime aide, Huma Abedin, pushed back against a top official's suggestion that Clinton ditch her personal email account and begin using a government-issued one instead, reported the Daily Caller.
In an Aug. 30, 2011, email addressing communication issues Clinton was having with her email, then-Executive Secretary of the State Department Stephen D. Mull said the department was "working to provide the Secretary, per her request a Department-issued BlackBerry to replace her personal unit," which was not functioning "possibly because of her personal email server" being down.
Mull said Clinton would be provided with two BlackBerrys, "one with an operating State Department email account (which would mask her identity, but which would also be subject to FOIA requests), and another which would just have phone and Internet capability."
The email was addressed to another Clinton aide, Cheryl Mills, and Patrick Kennedy, the undersecretary for management at the State Department. Abedin and Clinton aide Monica Hanley were copied on the message.
It was Abedin who replied to Mull's offer, saying it "doesn't make a whole lot of sense."
She insisted that "even the White House attested" that the issues plaguing Clinton's private server were "a pretty widespread problem, not just affecting us. So we should bear that in mind."
Mull responded, "Thanks for reminding all of this very helpful context!!! ☺"
Abedin replied, "Its pretty silly and she knows it."
The emails were obtained in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by government watchdog group Cause of Action.
It was revealed last spring that Clinton exclusively used an unsecured private server and email account based out of her New York home for official government business. The FBI, which is investigating whether Clinton compromised or mishandled sensitive information, seized the server in August after it was revealed that two emails classified as "top secret" had been sent to Clinton. Security experts said foreign hackers and governments almost certainly had access to the system, noted Newsmax.
Clinton maintains that she never knowingly sent or received any classified information, though the State Department has retroactively classified about 1,000 of her emails, according to Fox News.
