While serving as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton bought her BlackBerrys on eBay because she liked older models that the smartphone company had long retired, a top Republican on Capitol Hill revealed Wednesday.
“I don’t want to get into this too much, but part of what was happening with the secretary of state was, she was acquiring technology that wasn’t even supported by BlackBerry,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) told a forum in DC on Wednesday, according to the Washington Examiner.
“You couldn’t buy it. She was actually buying this stuff off of eBay because somebody was selling their old machine. That’s what she liked, so she did. It creates this huge vulnerability. And it’s unnecessary,” the House Oversight Committee chair added in an appearance at the American Enterprise Institute.
Chaffetz’s remarks come a week after the FBI released notes from its interview of Clinton that was part of its investigation into her private e-mail server.
The notes revealed that Clinton had 13 BlackBerry devices over her four years as America’s top diplomat.
When Clinton first took office, she requested a government BlackBerry similar to the one the National Security Agency had built for President Obama.
When that was rejected, she kept using her own BlackBerry, which she frequently lost or misplaced, according to the FBI.
Neither Clinton nor her lawyers were able to provide her old BlackBerrys to federal investigators. It is unclear what happened to them, although one aide to Bill Clinton, Justin Cooper, told investigators that he smashed at least two of the devices with a hammer when they were being replaced.
Despite the FBI’s decision not to recommend the Justice Department pursue criminal charges against Hillary Clinton, Chaffetz has pledged to continue using his House committee to investigate the Democratic presidential candidate.
Meanwhile, the conservative government-watchdog group Judicial Watch said newly released State Department e-mails showed Clinton deleted messages from her private e-mail server about the terror attack in Benghazi, Libya.
Dated October 2012, near the end of her term at State, the documents contained praise for Clinton’s testimony to Congress about the attack.
“These new Benghazi-Clinton e-mails prove that Hillary or her lawyers deleted material,” said Judicial Watch head Tom Fitton. “Clinton’s e-mail coverup scheme is as plain as day.”