E-mails reveal Clinton aides pushed back against using government email account

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Emails show State Dept. knew of Clinton's private server

Top Clinton aide resisted suggestion that former secretary of state use government email

A new set of e-mails released Monday shows a State Department official's suggestion to Hillary Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin in August 2011 that the then-secretary of state begin using a government email account was met with pushback.

The official, Stephen D. Mull, then the executive secretary of the State Department, mentioned Clinton’s use of the personal e-mail server in an Aug. 30, 2011 message while proposing that Clinton be provided with a new Blackberry equipped with a state.gov e-mail account.

“We are working to provide the Secretary per her request a Department issued Blackberry to replace her personal unit which is malfunctioning,” wrote Mull. He noted that Clinton’s device was malfunctioning at the time “possibly because of her personal email server is down.”

The e-mail was addressed to Cheryl Mills, with Patrick Kennedy, the undersecretary for management at the State Department, Clinton aide Monica Hanley, and Abedin copied on the message.

Mull offered to prepare two Blackberries, one of which would include “an operating State Department email account.”

His offer was met with resistance from Abedin in a later email.

“Let’s discuss the state blackberry, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” she wrote.

She added “even the white house attested” the outages affecting Clinton’s server were “a pretty widespread problem, not just affecting us.”

The emails were obtained by The Daily Caller through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the government watchdog group Cause of Action.

Clinton has been under criticism since news broke last spring that she had as secretary of state used a private server and email accounts for official business.

She has said she never knowingly sent or received classified information. However, the State Department, which under a Freedom of Information Act request is in the process of releasing roughly 55,000 pages of Clinton emails, is also retroactively classifying about 1,000 of her emails.