Bryan Pagliano, who set up Hillary’s private email server, joked about the dangers of using the same kind of system that he set up for Clinton. In October of 2013, just a few months after he left the State Department, Pagliano was recorded on video admitting that such a system could prevent federal record keepers from having a complete record of all conversations as required by law and also made it easier for a foreign government or a hacker from accessing Hillary’s system. With all the classified material on the server, it would be a major breach of security.
The former secretary of state mostly sent and received work-related emails on her personal Blackberry. In defending the decision to do that, the Democratic presidential candidate has said she did so out of “convenience.” That despite an email from Aug. 2011 showing that when the State Department’s executive secretariat proposed providing Clinton a government-issued Blackberry equipped with a state.gov email address, Clinton’s longtime aide Huma Abedin rejected the idea.
Clinton, who occasionally emailed from an iPad, had been provided an account on the the State Department’s classified messaging system, but she never used it.
Clinton has maintained that her use of a personal email account “was allowed” by the State Department. However, she violated agency policy by failing to turn over her work-related emails for nearly two years after leaving State. She also violated the spirit of federal regulations, which allow government workers to use personal email account for government business only as a last resort.
Clinton’s home-brew system, which she paid Pagliano out of her own funds to set up and manage, also allowed her to avoid having her work emails made public through records requests. Multiple Freedom of Information Act requests for Clinton’s emails were improperly denied during her tenure.