The State Department said Friday that 22 emails from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private unsecured home server contain highly sensitive government secrets classified as "top secret" and will therefore be withheld from public release later Friday, reported The Associated Press.
"We can confirm that later today, as part of our monthly FOIA productions of former Secretary Clinton's emails, the State Department will be denying in full seven email chains, found in 22 documents representing 37 pages," State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters, adding that "they will not be produced online on our FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] website."
It's the first time the Obama administration has confirmed that Clinton's home-brew email system contained messages worthy of one of the highest levels of classification, according to The Hill.
Kirby told the AP that the documents are being upgraded to top secret at the request of the intelligence community. Some messages found in the 37 pages include information belonging to "special access programs," an even higher level of classification reserved for information that could identify confidential sources or expose sensitive programs like drone strikes or government spying.
The State Department's Diplomatic Security and Intelligence and Research bureaus plan to investigate whether any of the information was classified at the time it was transmitted, according to AP.
The State Department has retroactively designated more than 1,300 of Clinton's emails at lower classification levels, while the intelligence inspector general determined that at least two contained information classified as top secret at the time Clinton received them. Clinton insists that she didn't send or receive any information that was stamped as classified.
"This is overclassification run amok," Clinton's campaign spokesman Brian Fallon tweeted Friday.
This is overclassification run amok. We adamently oppose the complete blocking of the release of these emails. https://t.co/77s6mtm0JA
— Brian Fallon (@brianefallon) January 29, 2016
"We firmly oppose the complete blocking of the release of these emails," Fallon said in a statement, according to NBC News. "Since first providing her emails to the State Department more than one year ago, Hillary Clinton has urged that they be made available to the public. We feel no differently today."
The FBI has been investigating Clinton's email arrangement to determine whether she knowingly sent or received classified information. Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, former chairman of the House Oversight Committee, and former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay have both said in recent days that sources within the FBI have indicated that the bureau is ready to recommend an indictment against Clinton, as HNGN previously reported.
