Shortly after Hillary Clinton's email scandal exploded in public, State Department legal officials were urged to make it clear they did not give prior approval for the arrangement, the Daily Caller reports.
The advice came from John Bellinger, the State Department's legal adviser during the George W. Bush administration, according to the Daily Caller, which added it appears to have gone unheeded — at least publicly.
"While the agency's information technology, diplomatic security and legal adviser divisions were not made aware of the setup, those facts only came to light in an inspector general's report that was published last month," reports the Daily Caller.
Bellinger had urged the legal staff at the State Department in March 2015 to come clean and admit they had nothing to do with Clinton's email arrangement. Instead, state officials continued to downplay Clinton's email setup.
And the website reported State Department officials declined for months to answer questions about who approved Clinton's email arrangement.
"In delaying saying whether Clinton's email system was approved by the State Department, the agency created the perception that the Democratic presidential candidate's email system was allowed," the Daily Caller reports.
Meanwhile, in a column printed in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Carrie Lukas, vice president for policy of Independent Women's Voice, attacked Hillary's attitude in dealing with the email scandal.
"Her campaign now is relying on the tried-and-true Clinton tactic of demonizing anyone who dares question her ethics as a partisan hack," Lukas wrote.
"We are supposed to be a nation of laws, after all, and those laws are meant to apply to everyone, even those with titles like secretary or senator," she wrote.