Posted: 11:28 pm PDT
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The Clinton emails? Not on the server @michaelsschmidt http://t.co/huOvNdyvmJ — Michael Tackett (@tackettdc) March 27, 2015
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Trey Gowdy: Hillary Clinton wiped her email server clean. http://t.co/rxEtHsEPE0 | Getty pic.twitter.com/lG6fIMGZnm
— POLITICO (@politico) March 27, 2015
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The New York Times also posted the letter from the former secretary of state’s lawyer David E. Kendall to House Chairman Trey Gowdy. Excerpt below:
There is no basis to support the proposed third-party review of the server that hosted the hdr22@clintonemail.com account. During the fall of 2014, Secretary Clinton’s legal representatives reviewed her hdr22@clintonemail.com account for the time period from January 21, 2009 through February 1, 2013. After the review was completed to identify and provide to the Department of State all of the Secretary’s work-related and potentially work-related emails, the Secretary chose not to keep her non-record personal e-mails and asked that her account (which was no longer in active use) be set to retain only the most recent 60 days of e-mail. To avoid prolonging a discussion that would be academic, I have confirmed with the Secretary’s IT support that no e-mails from hdr22@clintonemail.com for the time period January 21, 2009 through February 1, 2013 reside on the server or on any back-up systems associated with the server.
Page 8 of this 9-page document includes a letter from the State Department’s Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy:
We understand that Secretary Clinton would like to continue to retain copies of the documents to assist her in responding to congressional and related inquiries regarding the documents and her tenure as head of the Department. The Department has consulted with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and believes that permitting Secretary Clinton continued access to the documents is in the public interest as it will help promote informed discussion.
Accordingly, Secretary Clinton may retain copies of the documents provided that: access is limited to Secretary Clinton and those directly assisting her in responding to such inquiries; steps are taken to safeguard the documents against loss or unauthorized access; the documents are not released without written authorization by the Department; and there is agreement to return the documents to the Department upon request. Additionally, following counsel, we ask that, to the extent the documents are stored electronically, they continue to be preserved in their electronic format. In the event that State Department reviewers determine that any document or documents is/are classified, additional steps will be required to safeguard and protect the information.
The entire Kendall-Gowdy letter is available to read here.
Because it’s Friday, there is also this item from Gawker and ProPublica adding a stranger twist to this email saga.
Secret spy network funneled intelligence about crisis in Libya directly to Sec State Clinton’s private email account http://t.co/eMHBfYpV4y — ChrisHerter’s BowTie (@ColdWarBowTie) March 27, 2015
In related news, remember when Michael Schmidt broke the NYT story about Secretary Clinton’s exclusive use of a personal email account during her entire tenure as Secretary of State? That was on March 2. On March 25, Secretary Kerry finally asked the Office of Inspector General to review email and record retention at his agency. The letter Secretary Kerry sent to IG Steve Linick is available to read here (pdf).
Kerry asks IG for review of State’s email & records policies, but does not seek specific focus on Clinton’s practices http://t.co/1Lvtv2Vy06
— Josh Gerstein (@joshgerstein) March 27, 2015
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I don’t know about you but … it’s that kind of week.

Image: Tumblr, perfectedflaw via Mashable
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