U.S. Secretary of States John Kerry responds to reporters questions at a news conference at the end of a North American Foreign Ministers Meeting, Friday, Jan. 29, 2016 in Quebec City. The Canadian Press via AP
QUEBEC CITY, Canada—US Secretary of State John Kerry refused to say Friday whether his predecessor Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server to send emails now deemed to have contained top secret information had threatened national security.
Asked about the controversy after the State Department confirmed seven Clinton email streams would not be made public because of their contents, Kerry said that was not a matter for his office.
READ: Clinton’s emails (almost) name ‘biggest jerk’ in US diplomacy
“The seven emails, or a few emails at any rate, are being withheld at the request of the intelligence community itself,” he told reporters.
“I can’t speak to the specifics of anything with regard to the technicalities, the contents, what may or may not have taken place with respect to her personal server because that’s not our job. We don’t do that.
“We don’t know about it. It’s in other hands,” he said, explaining that the State Department’s responsibility was to release the mails according to a Freedom of Information Act order and not to comment on their contents.
“That is why it is happening at this moment. And that literally is all I am able to say about them—not because I won’t, but because we don’t have any of the other information. It’s not our information. We don’t make any judgments about it. That is in other hands.”
Kerry took over the State Department in February 2013 and his predecessor Clinton has gone on to become the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination in the 2016 race to the White House.
Clinton’s campaign has been dogged, however, by allegations that her use of a private email server, rather than a secure government system, while in office, had put US secrets at risk.
READ: US State: Dozens of old Clinton emails newly classified
On Friday, the State Department said emails had been removed from the latest batch to be released because they may contain top secret information—a decision that infuriated Clinton’s camp, which wants the mails to be released to prove her claim that they were anodyne.