Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton sent at least four messages from her personal email server while she was US secretary of state that contained information derived from classified material, according to a US government inspector general.
The four emails "were classified when they were sent and are classified now," Andrea Williams, a spokesperson for I Charles McCullough, inspector general of the intelligence community, tells Byron Tau of the Wall Street Journal.
Tau reports that the inspector general delivered a letter to Congress on Thursday asserting that Mrs Clinton should not have been using her personal server to send such information.
"None of the emails we reviewed had classification or dissemination markings, but some included [intelligence community]-derived classified information and should have been handled as classified, appropriately marked and transmitted via a secure network," McCullough wrote.
Mishandling classified information is prohibited by federal law, and numerous government employees, including former CIA head David Petraeus, have been charged with violations in recent years. Tau reports that the inspector general has provided relevant information to the counterintelligence division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for further investigation.
