WASHINGTON—The State Department has revealed that portions of 275 emails released on New Year’s Eve from Hillary Clinton’s time as secretary of state have been newly classified.
Clinton has said she didn’t send or receive information that was classified at the time via her personal email account, which was run on a private server at her New York home. Republicans have repeatedly questioned whether her use of a private email system put sensitive information at risk.
In all, the State Department said 1,274 of Clinton’s emails have been retroactively classified since the department started reviewing them for public release.
Two emails released Thursday were designated “secret,” the second-highest level of classification, which applies to information that could cause serious damage to national security if released. Most of the emails were classified “confidential,” which is the lowest level of classification.
In a statement Thursday night, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said, “With more than 1,250 emails containing classified information now uncovered, Hillary Clinton’s decision to put secrecy over national security by exclusively operating off of a secret email server looks even more reckless.”
About 5,500 pages of Clinton emails were released on the final day of 2015. Here’s a look at what was in the latest batch:
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EMAIL USE
Clinton and one of her closest aides, Jake Sullivan, had an exchange in September 2010 that showed considerable confusion over her email practices.
“I’m never sure which of my emails you receive, so pls let me know if you receive this one and on which address you did,” she wrote to Sullivan on a Sunday morning.
A few hours later Sullivan responded: “I have just received this email on my personal account, which I check much less frequently than my State Department account. I have not received any emails from you on my Stateaccount in recent days — for example, I did not get the email you sent to me and (Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs Jeff) Feltman on the Egyptian custody case. Something is very wrong with the connection there.”
Sullivan added, “I suppose a near-term fix is to just send messages to this account — my personal account — and I will check it more frequently.”
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SOROS
Billionaire George Soros, a major donor to liberal causes, confided to a former Clinton aide that he made the wrong choice in supporting Barack Obama in the 2008 primaries over Clinton.
Soros told Neera Tanden during a dinner sponsored by Democracy Alliance, a liberal group, that he “regretted his decision in the primary — he likes to admit mistakes when he makes them and that was one of them,” Tanden told Clinton in a May 2012 email. “He then extolled his work with you from your time as First Lady on.”
Tanden also said Soros had been “impressed that he can always call/meet” with Clinton on policy issues but he hadn’t yet met with Obama. Soros has been a major donor to Priorities USA, a pro-Clinton Democratic super PAC.
SITUATION ROOM PHOTO
Clinton expressed outrage at a Hasidic Jewish newspaper that airbrushed her and another woman out of a famous photograph of officials in the White House Situation Room watching the raid on Osama Bin Laden.
The original photo had shown Clinton seated at the table, her hand covering her mouth. Counterterrorism director Audrey Tomason had also been pictured, standing at the back of the room. Both were blacked out in the newspaper’s reproduction of the photograph.
“The Jerusalem Post reported today that a NY Hasidic paper Der Zeitung published the sit room photo w/o me (or Audrey T) photoshopped out perhaps because no woman should be in such a place of power or that I am dressed immodestly!!” Clinton wrote in an email with the subject line “Unbelievable.”
The email was sent May 8, 2011, to aides, including Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin, and to her daughter, Chelsea, under the alias Diane Reynolds.
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RIDING WITH HRC
Philippe Reines, Clinton’s senior communications adviser, developed an elaborate flow chart during the summer of 2012 to determine a specific pecking order: Who gets to ride with Hillary?
In an email to a group of Clinton advisers, Reines said longtime aide Huma Abedin should ride with Clinton under most circumstances, with deputy chief of staff Jake Sullivan joining Clinton on other occasions. Capricia Marshall, a Clinton insider and the chief of protocol, was also listed as someone who should ride with the secretary of state.
The flow chart also includes cases in which Clinton could ride with “Ambassador Tolerable,” how they should handle drives covering 10 minutes or more and the circumstances in which Reines “should jump in.” As they say, access is power.
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MISSED DEADLINE
The State Department said it wouldn’t meet a court-ordered goal of making 82 percent of Clinton’s emails from her time at State public by year’s end. The department said prior to Thursday’s release that while it has “worked diligently” to come close to the goal, it will fall short because of the large number of documents involved and the holiday schedule.
The department said Thursday it plans to release more Clinton emails next week.
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