Hillary Clinton instructed her lawyer to hand over to the Justice Department the private server she controversially used to host her email while Secretary of State. The FBI has also taken thumb drives containing copies of Clinton’s emails from Clinton lawyer David Kendall after determining they contained classified information. The decision to relinquish the server comes as the now-presidential candidate tries to tamp down criticism that she intentionally used the private email account to sidestep transparency requirements while attempting to address security concerns that the server may contain classified information.
Clinton “directed her team to give her email server that was used during her tenure as (Secretary of State) to the Department of Justice, as well as a thumb drive containing copies of her emails already provided to the State Department,” a Clinton spokesperson told CNN on Tuesday. “She pledged to cooperate with the government’s security inquiry, and if there are more questions, we will continue to address them.”
The State Department had previously not objected to Kendall holding the thumb drives containing the emails in his law office in Washington, D.C. “The drives contain around 30,000 emails that Clinton deemed work-related and turned over to the State Department,” the Associated Press reports. “[Clinton] destroyed thousands of others that she said were not work-related.”
