Hillary Clinton broke her 48 hour silence surrounding her email she used while serving in the Obama administration, on Wednesday with a late night tweet saying that she wants “the public to see my email,” but the pressure for answers from the former secretary of state is unlikely to go away as she faces the deepest scrutiny she’s been under since leaving the government.
“I asked State to release them,” Clinton tweeted at 11:35 p.m. EST. “They said they will review them for release as soon as possible.”
The developments have escalated since it was first revealed Monday night, turning into both a political tug-of-war between Republicans and Democrats, and raises questions — even from within her party — about transparency, security in the government and her future.
While the Clintons have plenty of allies to come to their defense, some on the left are using this opportunity as a sign to flag that the Democrats’ front-runner in 2016 campaign might still face some of the same organizational challenges and public relations gaffes they had eight years ago.
As the story continues, here’s a look at what you need to know.
Clinton: ‘I want the public to see my email’
Late Wednesday night, Hillary Clinton made her first public comments regarding the use of a private email server as opposed to a State Department one.
Marie Harf, a State Department spokeswoman, said the agency would review Clinton’s request.
“The State Department will review for public release the emails provided by Secretary Clinton to the Department, using a normal process that guides such releases,” Clinton said. “We will undertake this review as quickly as possible; given the sheer volume of the document set, this review will take some time to complete.”
A senior State Department official said on Thursday that they expect the review of Clinton’s emails to “take several months.”
Clinton had tried to avoid the controversy. On Tuesday night the former secretary of state delivered a much watched speech in Washington, D.C., but did not mention her emails, instead focusing in politics and teasing her likely presidential run.
After the State Department requested all secretaries of state send in their documents in 2014, Clinton and her team turned over 55,000 pages of emails to the State Department in December 2014. It is those emails that the former secretary of state wants released to the public.
But because the emails were housed on her private account the process was overseen by Clinton and her aides, not archivists like it would have been if the email was house on government servers.
A Clinton aide said that “anything that pertained to her work there” was given to State.
“So if she emailed with her daughter about flower arrangements for her wedding, that didn’t go in,” the aide said, “but if she emailed one of the 100 State Department officials she regularly corresponded with, State had it in their servers already and HRC’s office replicated that to ensure it was all there.”
The fact, though, that Clinton was in control of her own archives has concerned some archive and cybersecurity experts.
Most, but not all, Democrats unite behind Clinton
Most Democrats don’t want to talk about Hillary Clinton’s email controversy. She is the party’s prohibitive presidential favorite in 2016 and she leads every poll about the race, making it hard to other Democrats to draw her ire or knock her and risk hurting their best chance at keeping the White House.
When CNN’s Ted Barrett tried to ask Congressional Democrats about the controversy, the responses were far from eager.
“I’m not up to speed on it. I’m really not,” Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, who runs the Senate Democrat’s campaign committee. “Check back.”
“I don’t know enough about what those rules are, honestly, to comment,” said North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp.
When CNN tried to ask Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who some liberals are hoping will challenge Clinton for the 2016 nomination, a staffer shielded her and deliberately blocked the senator from answering. Warren climbed into an elevator without looking up.
Clinton supporters have also vocally supported her. New York Rep. Steve Israel said, “”Pretty soon we’ll have a special investigative committee for every action that Hillary Clinton takes. There will be a special select committee on her breakfast, her lunch and her dinner and what she had in between.”
For some Democrats, though, the email controversy has emboldened the wing of the Democratic party looking for a Clinton alternative in 2016.
Some early state Democrats told CNN’s Peter Hamby that the controversy shows the need for a competitive primary that will help vet Clinton for the general election.
“The Democratic base that isn’t wedded to her is nervous about it,” said Deborah Arnie Arnesen, a progressive radio host in Concord, New Hampshire told Hamby.
“These are problems that raise real leadership and transparency concerns, concerns that can be addressed in caucuses and primaries, but would go ignored in a coronation process,” said Boyd Brown, a Democratic National Committee member and former state legislator from South Carolina.
Where do the laws stand?
The National Archives and Records Administration, the government agency that regulates the Federal Records Act, issued guidance in 2009 — the same year Clinton took over at State — that did not outlaw use of personal email accounts.
“Agencies that allow employees to send and receive official electronic mail messages using a system not operated by the agency must ensure that Federal records sent or received on such systems are preserved in the appropriate agency recordkeeping system,” the regulations said. It is unclear if there was a time requirement for the preservation of the emails.
It wasn’t until August 2013 — after Clinton left state — that the records administration issued a bulletin that personal email can only be used in “emergency situations,” and when used, the emails “are captured and managed in accordance with agency record-keeping practices.”
Late last year — long after Clinton left the State Department — that President Barack Obama signed an update to the Federal Records Law to prohibit the use of private email accounts by government officials unless they copy or forward any such emails into their government account within 20 days.
Jason R. Baron, a lawyer at Drinker Biddle & Reath and the former director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration, said in an interview on Tuesday that is doesn’t appear Clinton “violated” the law because “the Federal Records Act is amorphous enough.”
Baron did say, however, that the exclusive use of a person email system is out of the ordinary.
“I was in the government for 34 years and in my experience, as director of litigation, I cannot recall an instance where a high level official — or anyone — solely used a private email account for the transaction of government business,” he said.
House committee subpoenas Clinton’s Benghazi emails
The House select committee investigating the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi issued subpoenas for Clinton’s email Wednesday.
“The Select Committee on Benghazi today issued subpoenas for all communications of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton related to Libya and to the State Department for other individuals who have information pertinent to the investigation,” said Jamal Ware, the committee’s communications director in a statement. “The committee also has issued preservation letters to Internet firms informing them of their legal obligation to protect all relevant documents.”
Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the committee, told CNN on Wednesday, before the subpoenas were announced, that he was willing to do whatever it took to get the documents.
“We are going to use every bit of legal recourse at our disposal to make sure” the committee gets all the documents, Gowdy said. If that requires “sending legal resource to the Secretary herself, that is what we are going to do.”
Democrats on the committee said Wednesday that they received “no notice” from Gowdy that they were preparing subpoenas for Clinton’s documents.
“I did not want to believe it, but everything I’ve seen so far has led me to believe that this is an effort to go after Hillary Clinton. Period. And I think that’s very very unfortunate,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the select committee.
A spokesman for Clinton failed to respond to CNN questions about the subpoenas, but Clinton’s team has been in contact with the committee.
After Gowdy said the former secretary of state used multiple private email addresses at State, Clinton’s lawyer David E. Kendall sent Republicans and Democrats on the House committee investigating Benghazi, a statement on Wednesday morning refuting Gowdy’s claim.
“Secretary Clinton used one email account when corresponding with anyone, from department officials to friends to family,” Kendall wrote in an email that explained how after Clinton’s email address was published in a 2013 Gawker story, “she changed the address on her account.”
“At the time the emails were provided to the department last year this new address appeared on the copies as the ‘sender,’ and not the address she used as secretary,” Kendall continued. “This address on the account did not exist until March 2013, after her tenure as secretary.”
Committee Republicans, however, stood by Gowdy’s claim.
GOP call for more investigations
Republicans wasted not time to jump on an issue they see as a winning on. Their goal is to paint Clinton in the same way they pained her husband: A dishonest politician who pushes ethical boundaries and feel the rules don’t apply to her.
The Republican National Committee sent the State Department Inspector General a letter on Thursday demanding an investigation into Clinton’s use of private email. The letter, from John Phillippe, chief counsel at the RNC, questions whether Clinton violated “the requirement to archive emails that are federal records under the Federal Records Act.”
“The American public deserves to know whether one of its top-ranking public official’s actions violated federal law,” the letter said. “With transparency and openness in government being one of President Obama’s guiding principles, it is incumbent upon your office to determine the facts surrounding this issue.”