RUTHFULLY YOURS

Clinton’s team likely will point to one message, at least, as evidence that they secured classified information even while conducting government business on a private e-mail server. Judicial Watch, the conservative group embroiled in a series of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits to obtain Clinton’s correspondence, says that the e-mails show a lack of caution about sensitive information.

“These e-mails Judicial Watch forced out through a federal lawsuit show that Huma Abedin used her separate clintonemail.com account to conduct the most sensitive government business, endangering not only her safety but the safety of Hillary Clinton and countless others,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton in a Monday statement.

In one message, a State Department official e-mailed Abedin to suggest an earlier-than-planned arrival in Geneva, Switzerland following a visit to Russia, in part because they couldn’t access a classified network in St. Petersburg. “It would be a lot better for us to work through the night there (with access to classified) than be stuck in St. Pete with no classified at all,” the official wrote.

Abedin, who had “no idea about comms,” agreed that Clinton would need a secure workspace. “Makes total sense,” she replied.

#share#The note buttresses one aspect of Clinton’s defense in her ongoing e-mail scandal. “I did not send or receive any material marked classified,” she told NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell. “We dealt with classified material on a totally different system. I dealt with it in person. I dealt with it in — on secure phone lines.”

It doesn’t change the fact that she has shifted through multiple different explanations since her original press briefing on the e-mail scandal, when she assured reporters that she never sent or received classified information at all. Two reviews conducted by the intelligence community have concluded that she received e-mails with top-secret information — the highest classification of government intelligence” — in 2009 and 2011.

Other Abedin e-mails show officials scheduling conference calls and making hotel arrangements for Clinton’s 2012 trip to Vietnam, when they opted to book her into a Sheraton that was close to the government buildings where she would have meetings and suitable for a high-level government figure.

“Given the purpose of the stop, the optics of staying at the available quality American name brand hotels would carry the same message, hence another for choosing The Sheraton,” a State Department official wrote to Abedin. The official also discouraged Abedin from putting Clinton in a different hotel because “the suite bathroom is nice, but not quite to the standard of the Sheraton.”

— Joel Gehrke is a political reporter for National Review.