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Her violations of public records rules are just the latest indication that her White House would have little regard for the people's right to information.

On January 13, 2009, Hillary Clinton attended her first confirmation hearing as a Secretary of State nominee. The same day, with Bush officials still under fire for using private email accounts to circumvent public records laws, someone registered Clintonemail.com, a domain that now appears to be at the center of a scandal. "Mrs. Clinton did not have a government email address during her four-year tenure at the State Department," The New York Times reports in a story published late Monday. "Her aides took no actions to have her personal emails preserved on department servers at the time, as required by the Federal Records Act."

This was willful, flagrant disregard for public records rules.

Many of those emails "would not have been located in response to Freedom of Information Act requests, subpoenas or other document searches," Politico reports.

The revelations reflect poorly on Clinton and her excessively loyal aides.

And they suggests that many in the Obama Administration, where her behavior was widely known to be verboten, did nothing upon getting official business emailed to them from Clinton's personal account. She was allowed to break the rules for years, much as Karl Rove was permitted to do so by his bosses in the Bush Administration.

What made her confident that she would get away with it? Perhaps she figured that if Sandy Berger could pilfer the National Archives and escape with probation, she could surely hide a few years worth of emails without any repercussions.

For those who've forgotten that jaw-dropping story:

According to reports from the Inspector General of the National Archives and the staff of the House of Representatives' Government Operations Committee, Mr. Berger, while acting as former President Clinton's designated representative to the commission investigating the attacks of September 11, 2001, illegally took confidential documents from the Archives on more than one occasion. He folded documents in his clothes, snuck them out of the Archives building, and stashed them under a construction trailer nearby until he could return, retrieve them, and later cut them up. After he was caught, he lied to the investigators and tried to shift blame to Archive employees.

Contrary to his initial denials and later excuses, Berger clearly intended from the outset to remove sensitive material from the Archives. He used the pretext of making and receiving private phone calls to get time alone with confidential material, although rules governing access dictated that someone from the Archives staff must be present. He took bathroom breaks every half-hour to provide further opportunity to remove and conceal documents... What could have been important enough for Berger to take the risks he did?

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Hillary Clinton's Contempt for Transparency

AP Photo

Emails sent by Clinton from her personal account weren't archived in official government records.

By Josh Gerstein

3/2/15 11:04 PM EST

Thousands of emails Hillary Clinton generated as secretary of state were not archived as official government records because she used a private email account to conduct State Department business, the State Department acknowledged Monday.

Aides to the former secretary of state turned over 55,000 pages of emails from her personal account to the State Department in December at its request, a department official said.

Story Continued Below

Clintons use of the personal account for work-related emails and the State Departments effort to gain control over the information were first reported by The New York Times. Clinton did not use a State Department email account, the paper reported.

Last year, the Department sent a letter to representatives of former secretaries of state requesting they submit any records in their possession for proper preservation. In response to our request, Secretary Clinton provided the Department with emails spanning her time at the Department, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement.

The Times story suggested that the private email trove came to light as the State Department worked to respond to requests for information from a special House committee probing the deaths of four Americans in a 2012 attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya.

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Hillary Clinton used private email account for State Department business

Hillary Rodham Clinton used a private e-mail account for her official government business when she was secretary of state and did not routinely preserve and turn over those e-mails for government records collection, the State Department said Monday.

Clinton has turned over thousands of e-mails to the department from her private account, a step that was first reported by the New York Times late Monday. The private account came to light when the department sought records from Clinton and other former secretaries who have held the post during the e-mail age.

Some 300 of Clintons recovered e-mails were then turned over to a congressional committee investigating the 2012 deaths of four Americans at U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

Last year, the Department sent a letter to representatives of former secretaries of state requesting they submit any records in their possession for proper preservation, Psaki said in a statement. In response to our request, Secretary Clinton provided the Department with e-mails spanning her time at the Department. After the State Department reviewed those e-mails, we produced about 300 e-mails responsive to recent requests from the Select Committee.

A spokesman for Clinton did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday night. The spokesman, Nick Merrill, told the Times that Clinton has complied with the letter and the spirit of federal rules on the retention of official documents.

It was not clear why Clinton, a potential 2016 presidential candidate, created the private account. But the practice appears to bolster long-standing criticism that Clinton and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, have not been transparent.

Hillary Clinton should release her e-mails, said Kristy Campbell, a spokeswoman for former Florida governor Jeb Bush, who is also weighing a presidential bid. Hopefully she hasnt already destroyed them.

Campbell noted that Bush created a Web site, at http://www.jebemails.com, providing public access to his electronic communications while in office. Governor Bush believes transparency is a critical part of public service and of governing, she said in a statement.

Clintons aides reviewed tens of thousands of pages of her personal e-mails and decided which ones to turn over to the State Department, the Times reported. In total, 55,000 pages of e-mails were turned over, the newspaper reported.

Clinton was not the first secretary of state to use a private account. The State Department said Clintons successor as top diplomat, John F. Kerry, is the first secretary to use a standard government e-mail address ending in state.gov.

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Hillary Clinton used private e-mail for government business at State Dept.

J. Scott Applewhite / AP

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 23, 2013, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the deadly September attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three otherAmericans.

By Michael S. Schmidt, New York Times News Service

Monday, March 2, 2015 | 8:30 p.m.

WASHINGTON Hillary Rodham Clinton exclusively used a personal email account to conduct government business as secretary of state, State Department officials said, and may have violated federal requirements that officials correspondence be retained as part of the agencys record.

Clinton did not have a government email address during her four-year tenure at the State Department. Her aides took no actions to have her personal emails preserved on department servers at the time, as required by the Federal Records Act.

It was only two months ago, in response to a new State Department effort to comply with federal record-keeping practices, that Clintons advisers reviewed tens of thousands of pages of her personal emails and decided which ones to turn over to the State Department. All told, 55,000 pages of emails were given to the department.Clinton stepped down from the secretarys post in early 2013.

Her expansive use of the private account was alarming to current and former National Archives and Records Administration officials and government watchdogs, who called it a serious breach.

It is very difficult to conceive of a scenario short of nuclear winter where an agency would be justified in allowing its Cabinet-level head officer to solely use a private email communications channel for the conduct of government business, said Jason R. Baron, a lawyer at Drinker Biddle & Reath who is a former director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration.

A spokesman for Clinton, Nick Merrill, defended her use of the personal email account and said she has been complying with the letter and spirit of the rules.

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Hillary Clinton used private email for State Department business

Washington Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may have violated federal records laws by using a personal email account for all of her work messages, the New York Times reported on Monday.

The newspaper said the likely Democratic presidential candidate conducted all her official business during her four-year tenure at the State Department on a private email account.

It added that Clinton, who stepped down as secretary of state in 2013, recently handed over 55,000 pages of emails to the State Department in response to a department effort to comply with record-keeping practices.

Federal law says letters and emails written and received by federal officials are government records that must be retained, according to the paper. Regulations at the time Clinton served as secretary of state called for emails on personal accounts to be preserved as well, the paper said.

The Times said most experts believed private email accounts should only be used for official government business in emergencies, according to the Times.

A spokesman for Clinton told the Times that Clinton was complying with the "letter and spirit of the rules" and had expected her emails would be retained. He declined to detail why she chose to conduct business from her personal account, the Times said.

The State Department did not immediately return a request for comment from Reuters. Clinton's spokesman could also not be immediately reached for comment.

Clinton is widely considered the front-runner for next year's Democratic presidential nomination if she decides to enter the race.

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Hillary Clinton illegally used a private email account, reports Times