The State Department violated one of Obama's executive orders when it released Clinton's emails

President Barack Obama
(Image credit: Getty Images)

Officials at the National Security Agency (NSA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) charge that the State Department broke the Obama administration's rules for sharing classified information when it published one of the emails from Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state.

Per a 2009 executive order signed by President Obama, content can only be declassified by "the originating agency," and preferably the exact "official who authorized the original classification." One of the two top-secret Clinton emails the State Department released earlier this year contained classified information that originated not at State but with the NSA, DIA, and NGA.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.