Testimony: Hillary Clinton Was Warned Against Using Personal Email, Devices

In testimony for a lawsuit being brought by Judicial Watch against the State Department, former Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Eric Boswell told deposition lawyers that he’d warned his former boss, Hillary Clinton, on multiple occasions that they should not be using personal email nor devices to conduct government business. Boswell said he warned both Clinton and her staff that such indulgences put them at risk of being hacked by foreign governments. Nonetheless, he testified, Clinton and her top aides were “wedded to their BlackBerrys.”

The deposition took place on May 2, but the testimony was only publicly released on Saturday.

“Thanks to our court-ordered discovery, we now have confirmation that Hillary Clinton was warned by the top security official in the State Department that unsecure BlackBerry and email use was a security risk, yet Hillary Clinton ignored these warnings,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

In the public release, Judicial Watch highlighted the following revelations from Boswell:

— “Hillary Clinton and other Senior State Department officials were warned in 2009 that ‘any unclassified Blackberry is highly vulnerable in any setting to remotely and covertly monitoring conversations, retrieving emails and exploiting calendars.’

— “Clinton was warned again in 2011 that, ‘We also urge Department users to minimize the use of personal web email for business, as some compromised home systems have been reconfigured by these actors to automatically forward copies of all composed emails to an undisclosed recipient.’

— “Clinton assured him that she ‘gets it’ when he informed her about dangers of Blackberries. “Clinton and her staff were ‘wedded to their blackberries’ and wanted to continue using them in secure areas even after warning because it was a ‘convenience issue’ to them.

— “He and other former State Department employees ‘were surprised’ to learn that Clinton used clintonemail.com to conduct official government business.  Boswell claimed that they were not aware of such activity while still employed by the government.”

Oh, and just to leave this off on a humorous note, our old pal Hillary was at Hunter College in New York City this week to deliver the commencement address. Naturally, she couldn’t help bringing up the Mueller report and Trump and all of that.

Here’s a direct quote from the former Secretary: “Now when I think about the future, I think about what do we do when people in positions of authority are not held accountable, when they defy requests from the Congress, when they spread misinformation online.”

Yeah, imagine that dilemma. People in authority not being held accountable for their actions. What a novel concept.