CLINTON EMAIL SERVER COMPANY FACING OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE CHARGES FOR DELETING SUBPOENAED EMAILS
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article37968711.htmlUnbeknownst to Clinton, IT firm had emails stored on cloud; now in FBI’s hands
BY GREG GORDON AND ANITA KUMAR
McClatchy Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON
A Connecticut company, which backed up Hillary Clinton‘s emails at the request of a Colorado firm, apparently surprised her aides by storing the emails on a “cloud” storage system designed to optimize data recovery.
The firm, Datto Inc., said Wednesday that it turned over the contents of its storage to the FBI on Tuesday.
A Republican Senate committee chairman, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, also has asked the firm to provide the committee copies of any data from Clinton’s account still in its possession.
There were conflicting accounts as to whether the developments could lead to retrieval of any of Clinton’s more than 31,000 personal emails, which she said she deleted from her private server upon turning over her work-related emails to the State Department, at its request, in December 2014.
Congressional Republicans have voiced skepticism as to whether the 30,940 business emails that the Democratic presidential candidate handed over represented all of those related to her position as secretary of state. Clinton has said her lawyers carefully pruned them.
The FBI is separately investigating whether Clinton’s arrangement put classified information at risk but has yet to characterize it as a criminal inquiry.
Datto, based in Norwalk, Conn., became the second data storage firm to become entangled in the inquiry into Clinton’s unusual email arrangement, which has sparked a furor that has dogged her campaign. In August, Clinton and Colorado-based Platte River Networks, which had managed her primary server since June 2013, agreed to surrender it for examination by the FBI.
Datto and Platte River seemed at odds, however, over how Clinton’s emails wound up on Datto’s cloud storage, which may have resulted from a misunderstanding.
Platte River spokesman Andy Boian said the firm bought a device from Datto that constantly snaps images of a server’s contents and connected it to the Clinton server at a New Jersey data storage facility. Platte River never asked Datto to beam the images to an off-site cloud storage node and never was billed for that service, he said. Company officials were bewildered when they learned of the cloud storage, he said.
“We said, ‘You have a cloud? You were told not to have a cloud.’ We never received an invoice for any cloud for the Clintons.’”
The source familiar with Datto’s account, however, said Platte River was billed for “private cloud” storage, which requires a cloud storage node. Because Platte River lacks one, the source said, the data bounced to Datto’s off-site cloud storage. The source said that senior Platte River officials may not have realized it, but company technicians “were managing the off-site storage throughout.”
Datto did not know it was backing up Clintons’ email server until mid August, the source said.
As to whether the FBI might recover Clinton’s personal emails from Datto’s storage, the source said: “People don’t Datto’s service for getting rid of data.”
The FBI requested the contents of Datto’s storage on Sept. 10, a person familiar with the situation said. On Friday, Clinton’s attorney, David Kendall, and Platte River agreed to allow Datto to turn over the data from the backup server to the FBI, said this person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
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