2nd witness confirms Hillary warned about email

Hillary Clinton at the American Federation of Teachers Union on July 13, 2018 (Video screenshot)

A second person has come forward with confirmation that aides to Hillary Clinton, or the secretary of state herself while she was in Barack Obama's administration, were warned about using a private and unsecure email system for classified information.

WND reported in May that Eric Boswell, a former assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, said he warned Clinton about the email setup, which exposed classified information to foreign hackers.

His testimony came as part of a lawsuit brought by Washington watchdog Judicial Watch against the government.

The organization on Tuesday said another official testified he warned colleagues about the unauthorized email system.

In the latest testimony in a series of depositions in preparation for the lawsuit, John Hackett, the former director for information programs and services, which handles records management at the State Department, said under oath he had raised concerns that Clinton's staff had "culled out" tens of thousands of emails without following strict National Archives standards.

Hackett also said he thinks there was interference with the formal Freedom of Information Act review process related to the classification of Clinton’s Benghazi-related emails.

Hackett, one of many Obama-era officials being deposed in the case, first was deputy director then director of the government program.

In March 2015, Clinton told reporters that she and her staff had deleted more than 30,000 emails "because they were personal and private about matters that I believed were within the scope of my personal privacy."

Later, however, the FBI confirmed recovery of more than 17,000 emails that had been deleted, and many were found to be work-related.

Hackett said he was emphatic that the guidelines needed to be followed.

"We heard that there were 50,000 or 60,000 emails, and that they had – 'they' being the secretary's team – had culled out 30,000 of these. … So we wanted to know what criteria they used," he said.

He said the National Archives is picky about such procedures.

Judicial Watch said: "In August 2014 the State Department sent some documents to the Benghazi Select Committee that included a small number of Clinton emails. Hackett was alerted about this production. Hackett was asked if the State Department attorney who gave him the heads up said why he was providing the information. Hackett answered: 'I think only because he knew that there was going to be publicity involved relating to this.'"

He explained he began to be concerned about Clinton's unauthorized email activity in 2013 when he saw a picture on a website of her on a plane with a BlackBerry device.

"And that got me thinking that, well, what — what was that BlackBerry? Was it a government BlackBerry? And if so, where were the emails relating to that BlackBerry?" Hackett said.

He also confirmed he knew that some employees had a personal email address for Clinton, but he had few other details.

"This disturbing testimony points to an Obama administration conspiracy to hide and destroy Hillary Clinton emails," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. "Even worse, the testimony suggests Clinton’s Benghazi emails were under-classified in order to protect Hillary Clinton (and mislead Congress). Attorney General Barr needs to prioritize reopening the Clinton email investigation."

It was U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth who ordered Obama administration senior State Department officials, lawyers and Clinton aides to be deposed or answer written questions under oath in the legal case brought by Judicial Watch.

Boswell testified he knew Clinton was warned twice against using unsecure BlackBerry smartphones and personal emails to transmit classified material.

But, he said, she did it anyway.