US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton broke the rules of handling her email account while she was Secretary of State, the State Department's inspector general said in a report released on Wednesday.

    The report said that Clinton never asked permission to use a private server to host her emails dealing with official State Department business and would not have received permission had she asked.

    Clinton's private server, which she ran out of her New York home, contained dozens of emails that the State Department later judged were classified, some at the highest level, the report said.

    The inspector general said Clinton should have turned over her emails when she left office in 2012. "Secretary Clinton should have preserved any Federal records she created and received on her personal account by printing and filing those records with the related files in the Office of the Secretary," the report states. 

    "At a minimum, Secretary Clinton should have surrendered all emails dealing with Department business before leaving government service and, because she did not do so, she did not comply with the Department's policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act." "Secretary Clinton never demonstrated to [State Dept. security officials] that her private server or mobile device met minimum information security requirements," the report said.

    It also detailed an attempt in January 2015 to hack into her account. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is conducting a separate investigation in the email scandal to determine whether Clinton committed any crimes.

    Clinton and three of her top aides refused to be interviewed by the inspector general's office for the report. During a presidential debate earlier this year with her challenger Senator Bernie Sanders Clinton laughed off a question about whether she would be indicted by the Justice Department.

Source : QNA