A top adviser to Hillary Clinton’s campaign-in-waiting accused the George W. Bush administration of using private emails to skirt transparency rules in 2007.
John Podesta, who left the White House in February for an unofficial role with Clinton, criticized Bush administration officials for using Republican National Committee email accounts for official business.
{mosads} “At the end of the day, it looks like they were trying to avoid the Records Act . . . by operating official business off the official systems,” Podesta said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.
The Bush White House admitted that it lost thousands of emails that weren’t backed up. Spokesman Scott Stanzel told reporters in 2007 that the White House had “not done a good job” of complying with transparency laws, according to The Los Angeles Times.
Clinton’s own use of private emails is under scrutiny after The New York Times reported on Monday that as secretary of State, she solely used a personal email for all her official business as the nation’s top diplomat.
The Times reported that Clinton aides took “no actions” to comply with the Federal Records Act by backing up the personal emails while Clinton was at State, and that her aides handed over 55,000 pages of emails to the National Archives only two months ago. Clinton’s tenure as secretary of State ended in early 2013.
Nick Merrill, Clinton’s spokesman, said in an email that, “the letter and spirit of the rules permitted State Department officials to use non-government email, as long as appropriate records were preserved.”
Merrill said the Clinton camp turned over tens of thousands of emails when the State Department reached out to update its record-keeping policies.
Republicans are seizing on the email controversy to hammer Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination.
“Voters should be extremely concerned Hillary Clinton kept all of her official email correspondence off the books at the same time corporations and foreign governments that donated to her foundation were lobbying her State Department,” Michael Short, a spokesman with the Republican National Committee, said in an email.
“Whether it’s these new developments or the decades of secrecy surrounding the Clintons, Hillary comes across as someone that’s got something to hide.”