Clinton had right to delete emails: US Department of Justice

Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton had the right to remove messages from her private email account and server, the US Department of Justice says in a court filing obtained by AFP.

“There is no question that former Secretary Clinton had authority to delete personal emails without agency supervision -- she appropriately could have done so even if she were working on a government server," the Justice Department wrote in a document filed this week in US District Court in Washington.

Under US National Archives State Department policies, “individual officers and employees are permitted and expected to exercise judgment to determine what constitutes a federal record,” read the document.

The filing came after Judicial Watch, a conservative monitoring group that seeks to gain access to all of Clinton's emails while she was the top US diplomat, lodged a legal action.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton dismissed the DOJ’s argument as having "absolutely no merit," saying that the court must preserve those emails “until the legal issue is resolved".

Fitton told AFP that Clinton had designed a system to “conduct all of her government business and then she just took it without prior review.”

Now, the US government is asserting that she was right to “go into this system, and take out what she thinks is personal and leave whatever she thinks is government," Fitton said.

The former first lady herself has denied handling classified information on her private server. However, federal investigators, looking into the latest batch of her emails released by the State Department, have determined that at least 150 of them contain classified information.

A federal judge has ordered the State Department to release Clinton’s emails once a month on a graduated schedule.

Fitton said that the Justice Department “is undermining its own investigation of this issue while also providing a defense for Mrs. Clinton personally,” and added that the DOJ’s filing will benefit Clinton’s “political aspirations.”

If "this is allowed to go by, our open records law ends," Fitton noted.

Clinton has already said she will not apologize for the issue, maintaining that what she did “was allowed.”

Her decision to use a private server potentially put thousands of pages of State Department emails at risk, but it also shielded her correspondence from congressional and Freedom of Information Act requests.

The growing controversy seems to have had affected the Democratic frontrunner’s campaign with polls showing voters are increasingly concerned about her transparency and trustworthiness.

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.co.uk