Destruction of Hillary Clinton’s Email Records During the U.S. Federal Government Investigation

The news wires have been ablaze with stories about Hillary Clinton’s private email server — production of some emails during a protracted government investigation and the destruction of other emails which Clinton deemed unrelated to the investigation. While pundits and supporters construe conclusions based on their political affiliation and beliefs, most do not have the knowledge and experience related to destruction of records and recordkeeping systems to clearly identify the legal and recordkeeping issues related to this matter.

This article is not meant as a political tirade, but rather an objective analysis of the laws related to the known facts and recordkeeping issues affecting the outcome. And, the article intends to clear the air regarding the behavior expected by the law during a government investigation (or litigation or audit) related to the destruction of email and other records. Background

For the last 30 years, I have preached in my writings, seminars and consulting projects that relevant records may not be destroyed during litigation, government investigation or audit. The records management profession and corporate legal departments advocate procedures, generally referred to as “legal holds” that prevent the improper destruction of records during legal actions. During an expert witness engagement, I was asked to read the twenty passages from my 1988 book “Recordkeeping Requirements” that implored readers to not destroy relevant records when litigation, government investigation or audit is in progress, imminent, or even in some cases even foreseeable.

In my experience, circa 1995, most large companies had Record
Retention policies in place whereby employees were admonished to delete any correspondence that could be viewed adversarially. These policies were extremely effective in providing denials of previous correspndence that would have negatively reflected on their employer, even to the extent of plausibly denying authorship of outbound letters.

Well we learned a lesson and proceded to productive business.

Destruction of Hillary Clinton’s Email Records During the U.S. Federal Government Investigation

"...under the statute, someone who knowingly destroys emails with the intent to make the emails unavailable for any current or future federal investigation or proceeding is subject to a fine of up to $250,000 and imprisonment for a period not to exceed 20 years.

[SNIP]

Clinton had been informed starting in 2012 of the House Select Committee’s investigation of Benghazi and received numerous requests for relevant emails, plus she received both a preservation order and subsequently a subpoena.

Here is a brief chronology of the email requests as prepared by Representative Jason Chaffetz:

•September 20, 2012: Committee requested from Clinton information (including emails) related to the Benghazi attack.

•December 2, 2014: Committee requested from David Kendall, Clinton’s attorney all official records in Clinton’s custody.

•March 3, 2015: Committee sent preservations order to Clinton and email service provider use by Clinton.

•March 4, 2015: Committee issued subpoena to Clinton requiring production of four classes of documents related to Benghazi.

•March 9, 2015: Platte River Networks learned of preservation order.

•March 25, 2015: Clinton’s team, including attorneys Kendall and Mills, held a conference call with Platte River Networks’ engineer responsible for Clinton email server.

•March 31, 2015: Platte River Networks created work ticket for deletion of server emails and destroyed all backups and emails using Bleachbit, a secure computer erase software.

Thus, while a government investigation, protective order and subpoena was in effect, Clinton’s team selected what they deemed to be relevant documents and destroyed the rest.

What implications? The justice department gave a blanket immunity to the guy that destroyed the emails The House of Representatives can’t even penetrate the immunity. Hillary’s response will be “I didn’t know he erased the emails”. The corruption is so deep here it’s incredible.

If you think this is about Hillary you are wrong. It’s about Obama and his cabal, they have to protect the globalists undermining the U.S. at all costs. If all the puzzle pieces were ever put together it would show the entire federal government being run from Soros’ headquarters.

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