Anyone who has ever tried to teach a parent how to use a newfangled electronic device is likely to be sympathetic to Hillary Clinton's apparent plight with her desktop computer. According to a sworn deposition by former State Department administrative official Lewis A. Lukens, Clinton was not ultimately set up with a computer in her office when she became secretary of state in 2009 because she was "very comfortable checking her emails on a BlackBerry, but she [was] not adept or used to checking her emails on a desktop."
The "I can't work a computer" excuse might have made sense in the early aughts... but it's pretty baffling for a high government official by 2009 (although one presidential candidate in 2016 has confessed he still doesn't even do "the email thing"). What's more, the release of the deposition follows an excruciating report from the State Department's inspector general earlier this week, which raised questions about Clinton and her aides' seemingly willful disregard for following proper cybersecurity measures.
The question of how adept Clinton was at computers is only the latest excuse from her camp; the Clinton team has also defended the former secretary of state for using her BlackBerry by saying two phones would have been a hassle, that she did not want a government account to mingle with her nonwork matters, and to keep information from the potentially prying eyes of Republican lawmakers.
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The State Department has said 22 emails sent or received from her private email server while secretary of state were top secret, but not marked as classified. Clinton has since called the decision to use her private server "a mistake."
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