That Mrs. Clinton is not the ultimate arbiter of whether her records must be preserved is made very clear in the Department of State’s own
records-management manual. Under a provision titled “Removal Procedures,” the manual sets forth the process that each Department of State employee must go through upon separation (i.e., resignation or retirement) from the department. In addition to relinquishing classified materials, all employees are required to clear the removal of any unclassified materials through records-management officials.
First, the “departing official or a staff member must prepare an inventory of personal papers and nonrecord materials proposed for removal.” The departing official must then “request a review of the materials proposed for removal.” Lest Mrs. Clinton claim she was not subject to this rule, the manual provides that this review process is specifically required for “Presidential appointees confirmed by the Senate.”
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Despite her repeated protestations at yesterday’s press conference that she followed all applicable rules, it is pellucid that she did not. Mrs. Clinton plainly did not just remove personal e-mails without clearing that removal with records officials; she also did not even return official records. Her defense now is that returning the documents two years later is good enough. But the same records manual emphatically rebuts that post-hoc justification. The department’s records manual requires that departing officials “must ensure that all record material that they possess is incorporated in the Department’s official files and that all file searches for which they have been tasked have been completed, such as those required to respond to FOIA, Congressional, or litigation-related document requests.” And lest the employee not get the message,
the manual adds that “fines, imprisonment, or both may be imposed for the willful and unlawful removal or destruction of records as stated in the U.S. Criminal Code (e.g., 18 U.S.C., section 2071).”