Maddow: ‘Real Questions’ About Hillary Only Using Personal Email at State Dept

‘Who is making the decision about what records from her time as Secretary of State will be released to Congress and the public?’

"According to The New York Times tonight, Secretary Clinton has used her personal email account exclusively to conduct official business while she was secretary of state. 

Now, that apparent practice of hers is becoming a question because her time as the secretary of state is over and her records from her time as secretary of state are supposed to be retained and to some extent made available both to Congress and to the public. 

The New York Times reporting tonight that Ms. Clinton's use of her personal email might have led to violations of federal requirements that official correspondence be saved in perpetuity. The Times says tonight the Secretary of State Clinton never had a government email address during the four years she served as head of the State Department.

Now, a former top lawyer for the National Archives tells the Times that it is, excuse me, it's 'difficult to conceive of a scenario, short of nuclear winter, where an agency would be justified in allowing its cabinet-level-head officer to solely use a private email communication channel for the conduct of government business.' 

Spokesman for Hillary Clinton tonight is defending her use of her personal email account. He says, former secretary has been complying with 'the letter and spirit of the rules.' Ms. Clinton, of course, stepped down from the State Department two years ago. Her advisors now have reportedly begun a process of reviewing her papers as secretary of state to decide what they are going to release publicly. They turned over 55,000 pages of email to the State Department. 

Ms. Clinton is now widely expected to be running for president and she is widely expected to win the Democratic nomination for president if she runs for it, in which case, of course, those emails would take on a new significance. 

In February a leading Republican Jeb Bush released many many thousands of his email messages from his time as Florida governor, including in a lot of cases, emails that reveled personal details of things like social security numbers about people who never expected to have that information become so public. 

But again, the new news tonight is that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is facing questions about why she never had a government email when she was secretary of state and her use of her personal email account for State Department business. 

Again, her spokesperson says she followed the letter and the spirit of the rules but there is a real question as to who is making decision about what records of her time as secretary of state will be released to Congress and the public. This being politics and the presidential campaign and you can bet there will be a lot more about this story."

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