Report: Company has no knowledge Clinton server was 'wiped'

WASHINGTON -- The company that managed Hillary Rodham Clinton's private email server says it has no knowledge the server was "wiped," which could mean more than 30,000 emails Clinton says she deleted from the device could be recovered, according to a report in The Washington Post.

Clinton has said personal correspondence sent and received during the four years she was secretary of state were deleted from the server. About as many emails pertaining to administration business have been turned over to the State Department, which is reviewing them and releasing them periodically by court order.

Deleting emails is not the same as wiping a server. Deleted emails often can be recovered from a device that has not been "wiped," which PC Magazine defines as "a security measure when selling, giving away or retiring a computer. A file wipe completely erases the data from the hard disk."

A spokesman for Platte River Networks, the Denver-based firm that managed the system, said the company has no information indicating the server was wiped, the Post reported. Platte River took over the device in June 2013, about four months after Clinton left the State Department, and turned it over to the FBI last month, the newspaper reported.

"All the information we have is that the server wasn't wiped," spokesman Andy Boian told the newspaper.

Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, said Saturday they will seek a review of the deleted emails if they can be recovered, the Post reported.

As she pursues the Democratic presidential nomination, Clinton has faced questions and criticism regarding her use of a private email account for government business. The FBI has been investigating the security of Clinton's email setup.

Clinton asserts she had the right under government rules to decide which emails were private and to delete them, a claim the Justice Department supported in a recent filing with the U.S. District Court in Washington. The conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch is seeking access to her emails under a public-records lawsuit.