Mother Jones
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Last week, Hillary Clinton finally apologized for using a private email server when she was secretary of state. That server is now in the hands of the FBI, but it took a while to get there. In December, the Clinton camp provided 30,000 or so work-related emails to the State Department after it deleted more than 31,000 emails from the server that it considered personal. In March, while declining to give a congressional committee access to the server, Clinton’s lawyer David Kendall said the emails stored on it had been permanently erased, or “wiped.” But weeks ago, with the email controversy showing no signs of subsiding, Clinton handed over the server to the FBI. The Washington Post reported Saturday that Platte River Networks, the Denver-based company that has managed Clinton’s email system since 2013, had no record of the server being “wiped.” So this could mean the FBI will be able to recover emails that the Clinton crew deleted—and that the bureau will be able to review all the emails and documents on the server to determine if materials, possibly including classified information, were handled properly.
The State Department is currently processing the 30,000 work-related emails Clinton returned to Foggy Bottom, and it is releasing monthly batches of these documents. But the full extent of what was on her private server remains unknown and is now a matter for the FBI to determine. We asked Jon Berryhill, a computer forensics expert and a former US Air Force investigator, to help explain how the FBI might try to resurrect the deleted contents of Clinton’s email server and what challenges the investigators might face. Here are some answers:
Excerpt from:
These Are the Forensic Tests the FBI Is Running on Hillary Clinton’s Server
