The State Dept. Just Undermined Hillary Clinton's Excuse About Her Emails in a Big Way

The State Department on Friday significantly undermined Hillary Clinton's explanation of how she tried to preserve her work-related emails to comply with federal records law when she was secretary of State.

On Tuesday, Clinton explained to reporters that she used her own personal email, and her own personal server, while she ran the State Department. Clinton said that for work emails, she would include other officials with "state.gov" email addresses in order to ensure they would be preserved.

Hillary Clinton said she sent her work emails to other State Department officials, but the State Department said that is not an automatic way to save emails. Image: AP Photo/Seth Wenig

But State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Friday that simply including other State Department officials on an email is by no means a guarantee that these emails would be preserved. Instead, she said that the vast majority of State Department officials are expected to voluntarily archive their work-related emails.

Psaki at one point said this was "voluntary" for State Department officials, and later said it was their "responsibility" to do this. But she said clearly that there was no automatic way to capture these emails, and it would depend on the actions of the officials involved.

Psaki said that since 2013, after Clinton had left, the secretary's emails have been automatically archived. She said this same system has only been in place for dozens of other senior officials since last month.

When asked directly whether emailing another official would have automatically created a permanent record, back when Clinton was secretary, Psaki indicated that this is a bad assumption.

"It depends on whether the employee archived their documents, doesn't it?" she said.

Psaki's comments would seem to further unwind Clinton's claim that she "fully complied" with her responsibility to ensure emails are preserved — Clinton's own comments indicate that she expected others to do this for her, but Psaki's explanation indicates this did not automatically have to occur.

But Psaki had no further comment about whether the department is satisfied with Clinton's explanations, and instead dodged those questions by saying reporters should ask Clinton herself.

"I would have you address that question to Secretary Clinton and her team," she said.

In light of Psaki's comments, here is the latest state of play on Clinton's emails:

1) Clinton said all her work emails were cc'ed to others at State, but it's now not clear that all of these were archived or kept by those officials.

2) Clinton said about 30,000 of emails she deemed to be "personal" were destroyed, and that she won't give anyone access to her serve. However, Time Magazine has reported that emails were designated as "personal" only if they weren't flagged by a keyword search, a process some have said is not very thorough.

3) The State Department has said it would release portions of the 55,000 pages of emails that Clinton did send in hard copy form to the department. However, State has said many of these documents will include redactions, and that some may not be released at all.

4) Despite her claims of compliance, House Select Committee on Benghazi Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) has said there are gaps in the emails they have from Clinton. Gowdy has subpoenaed Clinton for her emails, and has said Clinton should testify twice before his committee.