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The New York Timesis reporting that, during the time that she served as secretary of State,Hillary Clinton exclusively used a private e-mail account with unknown security protocolsto communicate with State Department employees, others in the federal government and, presumably, foreign government officials, in what appears to be a violation of both the letter and the spirit of federal record keeping laws:

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.

Mrs. 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 Mrs. 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. Mrs. 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 Mrs. 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.

Under federal law, however, letters and emails written and received by federal officials, such as the secretary of state, are considered government records and are supposed to be retained so that congressional committees, historians and members of the news media can find them. There are exceptions to the law for certain classified and sensitive materials.

Mrs. Clinton is not the first government official or first secretary of state to use a personal email account on which to conduct official business. But her exclusive use of her private email, for all of her work, appears unusual, Mr. Baron said. The use of private email accounts is supposed to be limited to emergencies, experts said, such as when an agencys computer server is not working.

I can recall no instance in my time at the National Archives when a high-ranking official at an executive branch agency solely used a personal email account for the transaction of government business, said Mr. Baron, who worked at the agency from 2000 to 2013.

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Report: Hillary Clinton evaded government e-mail while secretary of State

Hillary #39;s 2015 vs 2008 Poll Positions

By: 2016 Hillary Clinton Watch

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Hillary's 2015 vs 2008 Poll Positions - Video

MSNBC Hosts Agree: Elizabeth Warren Should Challenge Hillary Clinton
MSNBC Hosts Agree: Elizabeth Warren Should Challenge Hillary Clinton (February 9, 2015)

By: GOPICYMI

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MSNBC Hosts Agree: Elizabeth Warren Should Challenge Hillary Clinton - Video

Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivers keynote address during Watermark Silicon Valley Conference for Women on February 24, 2015 in Santa Clara, California Justin Sullivan, Getty Images

While Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, she did not have a government email address and used only a personal email account for government correspondence, according to a report by the New York Times.

Citing State Department officials, the Times reported that Clinton, who used her personal account for the entire four years she was secretary, "may have violated federal requirements that officials' correspondence be retained as part of the agency's record."

Deputy State Department Spokesperson Marie Harf defended Clinton in a statement issued Monday evening, saying, "The State Department has long had access to a wide array of Secretary Clinton's records -- including emails between her and Department officials with state.gov accounts."

Last year, the State Department contacted former secretaries of state, including Clinton, to request that they submit "any records in their possession for proper preservation" in accordance with new guidelines from the National Archives and Records Administration. Clinton complied and sent in emails "spanning her time at the Department," and in the last month, after reviewing the emails, the department sent 300 of the emails to the Select Committee, which had requested the emails.

Federal law dictates that letters and emails written by officials like the secretary of state are to be considered government records.

Harf also stated that John Kerry is the first secretary of state whose primary work email is a state.gov account.

Jeb Bush, who recently released his own emails from his time as Florida governor and is mulling a run for the presidency, was quick to Tweet a response to Clinton's emails, calling for more of her emails: "Transparency matters. Unclassified @HillaryClinton emails should be released."

President Obama famously uses a secure Blackberry for his emails, which are all being recorded by the government. Bill Clinton has said he sent only two emails while he was president -- one to U.S. troops in the Adriatic and the other to John Glenn on the occasion of his 77th birthday, which he was celebrating in outer space. "I figured it was okay if Congress subpoenaed those," the former president said at a conference, according to Fast Company.

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Hillary Clinton used only personal email at State Dept.

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