The latest batch of emails released from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private server reveal day-to-day conversations with her staff, correspondence with big Washington and Hollywood names and a few moments of technological frustration.
In the first email dump since Clinton testified for more than ten hours before the House Benghazi committee, Clinton scolds her staff for putting together an “inadequate” timeline of her leadership on Libya in 2011.
“This is example of my continuing concern that we don’t have our records ready,” she said in an email sent in April 2012.
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The committee investigating the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi has delved into the presidential candidate’s emails, half of which have now been released to the public. The remainder of the roughly 30,000 emails will continue to be released through next year, as the race for president heats up even more.
Clinton has faced questions about whether her unusual email setup, which involved a private server located at her New York home, was sufficient to ensure the security of government information and retention of records. The private server is the subject of an ongoing FBI investigation.
Yet Clinton’s place in preference polls has improved since the first Democratic primary debate, in which her chief primary rival, Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, defused the issue, saying “the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.”
Other emails in Friday’s queue show emails from big names, including actor Ben Affleck, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and civil rights leader Jesse Jackson.
Former aide to President Bill Clinton, Sidney Blumenthal, took up inbox room also — a hot topic during the Benghazi questioning last week, when Republicans took issue with the amount of access Blumenthal had to Clinton while he wasn’t working for the State Department. Clinton said she found some of the unsolicited information he sent interesting, and discarded some of it.
In other emails, Clinton details struggles with technology. “How does this work,” Clinton asks aides after getting a request to “connect” on the website LinkedIn. Another email contains a link to an article and asks aide Huma Abedin what her New York Times password is.
And after Clinton started using an older Blackberry, apparently for familiarity’s sake, she told aides: “I am quite bereft that I’ve lost the emoticons from my latest new old berry. Is there anyway I can add them?”
The Valentine’s Day email is followed by one a few months later, when Clinton has a “new berry.”
“Here’s my question,” she wrote, “on this new berry can I get smiley faces?”
Associated Press
Elisha Fieldstadt