Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton’s email woes may be getting increasingly serious as a State Department review has found that as many as 305 messages on her now-surrendered
private email server could
contain classified information needing a closer look.
Of the more than 1,500 documents analysed so far, 305 emails with potential classified data have been found, the State Department said in a court filing in response to a lawsuit.
Clinton has been at the centre of a storm over emails relating to her four-year tenure as Secretary of State ever since March when media outlets revealed that she had used a private server at her family’s New York home for routing all her emails.
last week, as Clinton finally agreed to surrender her email server to the Department of Justice in the wake of a probe initiated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, two of four classified mails were reported to be more sensitive than previously known.
But with the number of mails with possibly classified data going past 300, political pundits have begun to analyse whether the controversy could eventually undo Clinton’s second presidential bid. She was the clear Democratic frontrunner to start with, but her immediate rival, Senator Bernie Sanders, has considerably narrowed her lead over the past couple of weeks.
Following a request for public release of the emails under the Freedom of Information Act, the State Department is currently in the process of reviewing some 30,000 emails turned over by Clinton. The emails flagged for possibly classified information will be sent to the intelligence agencies for further review.
In a recent radio interview in Iowa, Clinton asserted that during her tenure as Secretary of State, she had not sent or received any emails on her private server that had information clearly marked classified at that time.
With the new disclosures about the 300-odd mails being under the scanner, Republicans have stepped up their attack on Clinton and painting her as someone not trustworthy for the high office she is seeking.
There was no immediate response from the Clinton campaign to the latest disclosure. State Department spokesman John Kirby, however, said it did not mean that all 305 mails would end up upgraded to ones with
classified data. “I suspect some will and I suspect some won’t,” he said, adding: “We just have to let the process work its way out.”