EMAILS: Clinton White House Files ‘Stolen’ From National Archives

by Michael Bastasch

While serving as secretary of state, the White House informed current presidential candidate Hillary Clinton that a two-terabyte hard drive full of records from her husband’s presidency were missing from the National Archives.

National Archives officials presumed the drive “was stolen,” according to a April 2009 email sent by White House counsel Daniel Meltzer to Jim Messina, President Obama’s deputy chief of staff.

“They last can account for the drive on January 30; they discovered it was missing on March 24 (NARA leadership found out later). They believe it was stolen,” Meltzer wrote to Messina, which was forwarded to Clinton aides.

“Two terabytes is a very very large amount of data; the drive may contain a wide range of memos, emails, and other electronic documents from the Clinton White House,” Meltzer wrote.

“All the material is unclassified, except for three documents which Bill Leary has examined and does not believe present any significant risk. Based on its analysis, NARA believes the drive contains other sensitive material,” Meltzer wrote.

Meltzer email to Messina (TheDCNF Screenshot)

Staffers quickly forwarded the email to Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills, who forwarded it to Clinton herself. In many cases, Clinton responded, “Pls print.”

The email was one of 357 released by the Department of State Thursday as part of their investigation into Clinton’s storing classified materials on a private, unsecured email server based out of her home in Chappaqua, New York.

Clinton turned over 55,000 pages of work-related emails to the State Department in 2014 from the private server she used while secretary of state. Clinton claims she deleted 30,000 emails that were “personal” in nature.

It wasn’t long, however, before the FBI found 17,000 work-related emails Clinton kept or deleted. Investigators found that Clinton was improperly storing classified materials on her private server, FBI Director Comey noted.

Comey called Clinton’s handling of classified materials “extremely careless,” but declined to recommend she be prosecuted.

Clinton’s staff also had tens of thousands of personal emails published online by WikiLeaks, emails which were obtained from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta’s hacked Gmail account.

Follow Michael on Facebook and Twitter