Clinton IT Aide's Email Archive Is Lost: State Dept

All the archived copies of emails sent to and from a man who established and managed Hillary Clinton's private email server, in her four years as secretary, have been lost.

Still, a few of the IT specialist Bryan Pagliano's messages have been retrieved, said spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau. This was contradicting an earlier Republican National Committee (RNC) court filing.

"The department has searched for Mr. Pagliano's email pst file and has not located one that covers the time period of Secretary Clinton's tenure," Trudeau said early on Monday evening.

"The absence of this email file, however, does not indicate that the department has no emails sent or received by him," she added. "In fact, we have previously produced through [the Freedom of Information Act] and to Congress emails sent and received by Mr. Pagliano during Secretary Clinton's tenure."

Even though the State Department had earlier informed Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) that no back-ups of Pagliano's emails were located during a congressional study in December, the fact that it acknowledged that files were missing on Monday increased the charges against the agency's recordkeeping.

How the emails were stored, and whether Pagliano had decided to delete them after some time was not made clear.

"It is not required for employees to save every email they sent and received, however they must preserve federal records," she told reporters in the daily State Department briefing.

The RNC had asked for the IT aide's records as part of a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act that was filed this year. The RNC had gone to court to take some emails to and from Pagliano, along with records that had been collected during Clinton's tenure.

The State Department said that a few messages to and from Pagliano have been found. They were perhaps made through accounts of other people, even though it is at odds with an RNC filing made earlier in the day.

"[T]he State Department has represented that no responsive records exist ... [of] [a]ny and all emails sent to, or sent by, Bryan Pagliano for the time period May 1, 2009 through February 1, 2013," the RNC said in a filing as part of the court case.

The State Department's Monday evening statement, which came hours after the department first addressed the missing emails, seemed to take issue with the RNC's description of its position.

"At no point did the State Department convey to the RNC that we did not intend to produce responsive emails within our possession, consistent with our obligations under the law," Trudeau said in her statement. "As this matter is in ongoing litigation, as is standard, the department cannot comment further on this matter."