WASHINGTON — Senior Obama administration officials knew as early as 2009 that Hillary Rodham Clinton was using a private email address for her government correspondence.
White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel requested Clinton’s email address on Sept. 5, 2009, according to one of some 3,000 pages of correspondence released by the State Department on Tuesday evening. His request came three months after top Obama strategist David Axelrod asked the same question of one of Clinton’s top aides.
But it’s unclear whether the officials realized Clinton, now the leading Democratic presidential candidate, was running her email from a server located in her Chappaqua, New York, home — a potential security risk and violation of administration policy.
Clinton’s emails have become an issue in her early 2016 campaign, as Republicans accuse her of using a private account rather than the standard government address to avoid public scrutiny of her correspondence. As the controversy has continued, Clinton has seen ratings of her character and trustworthiness drop in polling.
The newly released emails show Clinton sent or received at least 12 messages in 2009 on her private email server that were later classified “confidential” by the U.S. government because officials said they contained activities relating to the intelligence community.