Hillary Clinton's 31,000 deleted emails probably aren't gone forever

Hillary Clinton
(Image credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

The tech company handling the private email server Hillary Clinton used as secretary of state has "no knowledge of the server being wiped," a Platte River Networks spokesman told The Washington Post on Saturday.

The Democratic presidential frontrunner has said for months that she deleted 31,000 private emails from her time in office, but that's not the same as wiping a server. Even deleted emails will typically show up on a server in good condition unless the data has been erased several times.

The FBI is investigating Clinton's server setup. Government officials have claimed she tried to wipe it before handing it over, to which she notoriously responded, "What, like with a cloth or something?"

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Continue reading for free

We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.

Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.

Julie Kliegman

Julie Kliegman is a freelance writer based in New York. Her work has appeared in BuzzFeed, Vox, Mental Floss, Paste, the Tampa Bay Times and PolitiFact. Her cats can do somersaults.