Hillary Clinton sent emails ‘stamped' Top Secret? No, inquiries paint a different picture

Yahoo

01-04-2025

Statement: 'Hillary Clinton was sending classified documents that were stamped TS or TSSCI.'
After top U.S. national security leaders erroneously messaged a journalist sensitive operational details about impending military action, political figures on both sides of the aisle called to mind other classified documents incidents.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., posted a video on X, asserting that the Trump administration's use of the commercial messaging app Signal to discuss bombing Yemen was incomparable to Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email and private email server when she was President Barack Obama's secretary of state.
"To compare the two, between Hillary Clinton and what President (Donald) Trump's cabinet members were doing is absolutely absurd," Mullin said March 26. "Hillary Clinton was sending classified documents that were stamped TS or TSSCI."
The acronyms are intelligence shorthand for "top secret" and "top secret/sensitive compartmented information."
On the contrary, in the Signal conversation among Trump administration officials, Mullin said no classified information was shared.
That Clintonemailed information marked "TS or TSSCI" was not borne out in any of the investigations into her emails. Although FBI and State Department reports found that some classified material was included among some Clinton emails, none of them were clearly marked as classified or top secret, as Mullin said.
As secretary of state, Clinton used a personal email address ending in @clintonemail.com, which meant its data was housed on private servers in her New York home. The emails have been the subject of FBI and congressional scrutiny for years.
A 2019 State Department report rebuts Mullin's statement that Clinton sent classified information. In 2016, the FBI reported that 113 of the approximately 30,000 emails it reviewed contained information that was classified at the time they were sent or received. Of the emails, the FBI reported that "a very small number" of emails containing classified information were duly marked signaling their classification.
The State Department report said "instances of classified information being deliberately transmitted via unclassified email" were "rare." "There was no persuasive evidence of systemic, deliberate mishandling of classified information," it said.
Thomas Blanton, the director of George Washington University's National Security Archive, said the National Security Archive team has reviewed thousands of the now-public emails from Clinton's private server.
"None of them were stamped TS (Top Secret) or TSSCI (Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information) at the time they were sent or received," Blanton told PolitiFact. "None of them were even marked as classified at the time she sent or received them."
He added that the State Department concluded the same thing after reviewing all the emails.
We emailed Mullin's spokesperson and received no response.
From July 2016 to September 2019, the State Department's Office of Information Security reviewed "tens of thousands" of documents, gathered statements from hundreds of past and current State Department employees and conducted dozens of interviews.
The State Department team concluded that Clinton's "use of a private email system to conduct official business added an increased degree of risk of compromise," because a private system lacked the security capabilities of State Department networks.
For the sake of speed, classified information was in some instances "inappropriately introduced into an unclassified system," but the people involved were "aware of security policies and did their best to implement them in their operations," the report said.
The State Department report also said that "a typical security violation involves pre-marked classified information discovered" at the time of the incident, none of which was found.
"None of the emails at issue in this review were marked as classified," it said.
In 2016, the then-FBI Director James Comey said that of the approximately 30,000 emails the agency analyzed, eight email chains — containing an unspecified number of individual emails — contained information classified "top secret" at the time they were sent or received. Other email chains contained information classified at levels below top secret. Comey did not specify how many emails containing classified information Clinton sent compared to how many she received.
But Comey said that emails containing classified information weren't properly labeled.
"Only a very small number of the e-mails containing classified information bore markings indicating the presence of classified information," he said, without providing the number of emails marked appropriately.
Comey testified on July 7, 2016, that classified documents come with headers signaling their classification level and acknowledged that the documents in Clinton's emails had no headers. He also said that three of the approximately 30,000 emails had classification markings.
When asked whether emails lacking headers would have told Clinton that the material wasn't classified, Comey replied, "That would be a reasonable inference."
The Justice Department's 2018 report on the FBI's handling of the Clinton email investigation said prosecutors found no evidence that Clinton or her aides intended to "communicate classified information on unclassified systems."
The 2018 report also said that the classified emails weren't appropriately marked.
"The emails in question lacked proper classification markings," it said. "The senders often refrained from using specific classified facts or terms in emails and worded emails carefully in an attempt to 'talk around' classified information."
The 2018 report said prosecutors recommended against prosecuting because "none of the emails contained clear classification markings as required." Three email chains included paragraphs marked "C" for confidential. But that's not a complete or sufficient classification marking.
Mullin said, "Hillary Clinton was sending classified documents that were stamped TS or TSSCI."
Mullin provided no information supporting his statement and FBI and government reviews contradict him.
In 2016, Comey testified that three of the approximately 30,000 emails reviewed had any classification markings at all, and those markings did not signal the documents were top secret or TSSCI. A 2018 Justice Department report reiterated that the emails "lacked proper classification markings." And a 2019 State Department report said "none of the emails" reviewed "were marked as classified."
We rate this claim False.
U.S. Sen. Markwayne Mullin X post, March 25, 2025
Email interview with Thomas Blanton, the director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, March 27, 2025
PolitiFact, Clinton exaggerates absence of classified information in her emails, Sept. 13, 2022
PolitiFact, Comparing Hillary Clinton's emails and Donald Trump's boxes of files, Aug. 9, 2022
PolitiFact, Could Donald Trump declassify documents with just a thought? Three legal precedents say no,
The Atlantic, The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans, March 24, 2025
The Atlantic, Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump's Advisers Shared on Signal, March 26, 2026
Office of the Inspector General U.S. Department of Justice, A Review of Various Actions by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Justice in Advance of the 2016 Election, June 2018
Technology Transformation Services Handbook, Top Secret / Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) Clearance, accessed March 27, 2025
FBI, Statement by FBI Director James B. Comey on the Investigation of Secretary Hillary Clinton's Use of a Personal E-Mail System, July 5, 2016
US House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform, Hearing: Comey testimony, July 7, 2016
Politico, State Dept. finds no 'systemic' classified violation in Hillary Clinton private-server emails, Oct. 18, 2019
The Washington Post, Hillary Clinton's claim that 'zero emails' were marked classified, Sept. 8, 2022
Army Information Security, Classification Levels, accessed March 28, 2025
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Claim that Hillary Clinton sent emails 'stamped' Top Secret is false