Clinton 'can't answer' why State Department demanded her emails as new report says investigators focused only on her – not on all former secretaries of state
- Report says State Department only asked for Clinton emails - not those from all other former secretaries of state
- Clinton has been claiming the department's request was only routine
- Discovery of private, home-based server triggered unusual request
Hillary Clinton's email problem is getting worse - not better.
A new report this week alleges the former secretary of state's private, home-based email server was discovered by the State Department in 2014, triggering a request that summer for the emails she sent through the server.
That undercuts a key claim Clinton has been making for months - that she was only asked for her emails as part of a routine request that was also sent to her predecessors.
When confronted with the discrepancy by reporters at the Des Moines Register, where she had sat for an editorial board meeting on Tuesday, Clinton said she had no answers.
Hillary Clinton sat down on Tuesday with The Des Moines Register editorial board just as a Washington Post report challenged some of her longstanding claims about her private email server while she was secretary of state
'I don't know that. I can't answer that,' Clinton said. All I know is that they sent the same letter to everybody. That's my understanding.
'You're telling me something I don't know,' she continued. 'What I have said is it was allowed.
'The State Department has confirmed that. The same letter went to, as far as I know, my predecessors, and I'm the one who said, "Hey, I'll be glad to help." '
The discrepancy in the report by the Washington Post also appears to undercut another longstanding claim of Clinton's - that the State Department was aware of the private nature of her email server.
The Post report says Clinton was contacted by the State Department last summer, months before another request in November that included her three predecessors - Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell and Madeleine Albright.
Questions about Clinton's private, home-based email setup have dogged her on the campaign trail, starting back in March when the secret nature of them first became public knowledge
The former first lady and secretary of state is expected to testify on Capitol Hill in about a month before the House Select Committee on Benghazi, which has been relentlessly pursuing the issue of her private emails
In a statement, Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill maintained that the State Department request included Clinton 'and other prior secretaries of state' as part of 'record-keeping.'
'Due to her practice of emailing her colleagues on their state.gov email addresses, 90% of her work-related correspondence occurred on the Department’s email system, and she provided her copies as well, about 55,000 pages total,' Merrill told the Post.
'Everything she has said in answering questions has been consistent with this.'
But the Post report said State Department officials were unaware that Clinton had been using a private email setup until the spring of 2014.
That's when the department was trying to respond to a Republican-controlled House committee's demand for documents relating to the September 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi, Libya.
According to the post, department lawyers found Clinton's personal email address on some Benghazi documents, but no official state.gov address.
The FBI has been investigating whether Clinton mishandled any classified intelligence through the private server, but the investigation is not being described as a criminal probe.
Clinton herself has denied any wrong-doing and said she has turned over a total of 55,000 pages of work-related emails.
The State Department has been under a siege of sorts in recent months, facing a variety of requests and lawsuits over open-record requests for Clinton's emails as secretary of state.
The controversy has certainly damaged Clinton's current presidential campaign as well, although she remains the front-runner among the Democratic candidates.
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