Hillary Clinton to turn over private email server to Justice Department

Hillary Clinton agreed to turn over her private email server to authorities on Tuesday, the same day an intelligence community inspector general told congressional committees that at least five emails from the server did contain classified information.

The decision to hand over the server, as well as a thumb drive of all her work-related emails to the Justice Department, represents an effort to blunt an expanding probe into her use of a private email account.

Clinton, now the Democratic presidential front-runner, “directed her team to give her email server that was used during her tenure as (secretary of state) to the Department of Justice, as well as a thumb drive containing copies of her emails already provided to the State Department,” her spokesman, Nick Merrill, told CNN early Tuesday evening. “She pledged to cooperate with the government’s security inquiry, and if there are more questions, we will continue to address them.”

Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight

Hillary Clinton accepts the Democratic Party's nomination for president at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on July 28, 2016. The former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state was the first woman to lead the presidential ticket of a major political party.

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Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight

Before marrying Bill Clinton, she was Hillary Rodham. Here she attends Wellesley College in Massachusetts. Her commencement speech at Wellesley's graduation ceremony in 1969 attracted national attention. After graduating, she attended Yale Law School.

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Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight

Rodham was a lawyer on the House Judiciary Committee, whose work led to impeachment charges against President Richard Nixon in 1974.

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Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight

In 1975, Rodham married Bill Clinton, whom she met at Yale Law School. He became the governor of Arkansas in 1978. In 1980, the couple had a daughter, Chelsea.

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Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight

Arkansas' first lady, now using the name Hillary Rodham Clinton, wears her inaugural ball gown in 1985.

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Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight

The Clintons celebrate Bill's inauguration in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1991. He was governor from 1983 to 1992, when he was elected President.

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Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight

Bill Clinton comforts his wife on the set of "60 Minutes" after a stage light broke loose from the ceiling and knocked her down in January 1992.

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Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight

In June 1992, Clinton uses a sewing machine designed to eliminate back and wrist strain. She had just given a speech at a convention of the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union.

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Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight

During the 1992 presidential campaign, Clinton jokes with her husband's running mate, Al Gore, and Gore's wife, Tipper, aboard a campaign bus.

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Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight

Clinton accompanies her husband as he takes the oath of office in January 1993.

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Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight

The Clintons share a laugh on Capitol Hill in 1993.

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Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight

Clinton unveils the renovated Blue Room of the White House in 1995.

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Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight

Clinton waves to the media in January 1996 as she arrives for an appearance before a grand jury in Washington. The first lady was subpoenaed to testify as a witness in the investigation of the Whitewater land deal in Arkansas. The Clintons' business investment was investigated, but ultimately they were cleared of any wrongdoing.

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Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight

The Clintons hug as Bill is sworn in for a second term as President.

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Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight

The first lady holds up a Grammy Award, which she won for her audiobook "It Takes a Village" in 1997.

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Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight

The Clintons dance on a beach in the U.S. Virgin Islands in January 1998. Later that month, Bill Clinton was accused of having a sexual relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

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Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight

Clinton looks on as her husband discusses the Monica Lewinsky scandal in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on January 26, 1998. Clinton declared, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." In August of that year, Clinton testified before a grand jury and admitted to having "inappropriate intimate contact" with Lewinsky, but he said it did not constitute sexual relations because they had not had intercourse. He was impeached in December on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.

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Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight

The first family walks with their dog, Buddy, as they leave the White House for a vacation in August 1998.

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Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight

President Clinton makes a statement at the White House in December 1998, thanking members of Congress who voted against his impeachment. The Senate trial ended with an acquittal in February 1999.

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Clinton announces in February 2000 that she will seek the U.S. Senate seat in New York. She was elected later that year.

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Clinton makes her first appearance on the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee.

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Sen. Clinton comforts Maren Sarkarat, a woman who lost her husband in the September 11 terrorist attacks, during a ground-zero memorial in October 2001.

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Clinton holds up her book "Living History" before a signing in Auburn Hills, Michigan, in 2003.

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Clinton and another presidential hopeful, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, applaud at the start of a Democratic debate in 2007.

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Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight

Obama and Clinton talk on the plane on their way to a rally in Unity, New Hampshire, in June 2008. She had recently ended her presidential campaign and endorsed Obama.

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Obama is flanked by Clinton and Vice President-elect Joe Biden at a news conference in Chicago in December 2008. He had designated Clinton to be his secretary of state.

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Photos: Hillary Clinton's life in the spotlight

Clinton, as secretary of state, greets Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin during a meeting just outside Moscow in March 2010.

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The Clintons pose on the day of Chelsea's wedding to Marc Mezvinsky in July 2010.

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In this photo provided by the White House, Obama, Clinton, Biden and other members of the national security team receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in May 2011.

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Clinton checks her Blackberry inside a military plane after leaving Malta in October 2011. In 2015, The New York Times reported that Clinton exclusively used a personal email account during her time as secretary of state. The account, fed through its own server, raises security and preservation concerns. Clinton later said she used a private domain out of "convenience," but admits in retrospect "it would have been better" to use multiple emails.

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Clinton arrives for a group photo before a forum with the Gulf Cooperation Council in March 2012. The forum was held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

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Obama and Clinton bow during the transfer-of-remains ceremony marking the return of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, who were killed in Benghazi, Libya, in September 2012.

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Clinton ducks after a woman threw a shoe at her while she was delivering remarks at a recycling trade conference in Las Vegas in 2014.

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Clinton, now running for President again, performs with Jimmy Fallon during a "Tonight Show" skit in September 2015.

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Clinton testifies about the Benghazi attack during a House committee meeting in October 2015. "I would imagine I have thought more about what happened than all of you put together," she said during the 11-hour hearing. "I have lost more sleep than all of you put together. I have been wracking my brain about what more could have been done or should have been done." Months earlier, Clinton had acknowledged a "systemic breakdown" as cited by an Accountability Review Board, and she said that her department was taking additional steps to increase security at U.S. diplomatic facilities.

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U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders shares a lighthearted moment with Clinton during a Democratic presidential debate in October 2015. It came after Sanders gave his take on the Clinton email scandal. "The American people are sick and tired of hearing about the damn emails," Sanders said. "Enough of the emails. Let's talk about the real issues facing the United States of America."

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Clinton is reflected in a teleprompter during a campaign rally in Alexandria, Virginia, in October 2015.

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Clinton walks on her stage with her family after winning the New York primary in April.

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After conceding the presidency to Trump in a phone call earlier, Clinton addresses supporters and campaign workers in New York on Wednesday, November 9. Her defeat marked a stunning end to a campaign that appeared poised to make her the first woman elected US president.

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Merrill said in the meantime, Clinton’s team “has worked with the State Department to ensure her emails are stored in a safe and secure manner.”

The FBI, which is handling the matter, declined to comment Tuesday evening. David E. Kendall, Clinton’s lawyer, did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

A senior Clinton campaign aide said the server hadn’t yet changed hands as of Tuesday evening and Clinton’s team is working with the Justice Department to arrange the logistics of the handover. The thumb drive, meanwhile, has been turned over. And Kendall, the aide said, has followed State Department guidance on safekeeping.

Clinton’s campaign believes there are no emails from her State Department tenure on the server, since it was wiped clean after she turned over her work-related emails to the State Department, the aide said.

The aide said it’s the Clinton campaign’s understanding that the Justice Department isn’t looking to reconstruct the server’s history, but is instead concerned about the security of the emails today, since some are now classified, though they weren’t classified or labeled as such at the time.

Clinton certifies she has turned over work-related emails

Boehner: ‘It’s about time’

For Clinton, the move – which Republicans like House Speaker John Boehner have urged for months – indicates her campaign sees a growing risk in the issue of her use of a private email server, which has stoked concerns about her trustworthiness.

“It’s about time,” Boehner said in a statement Tuesday night.

Since news broke in March of her use of a personal email address on a server kept in her Chappaqua, New York, home, Clinton has insisted that she’s turned over all of her work-related emails to the State Department and deleted all others – but wouldn’t turn over her server to the government.

Clinton has been dogged by poll numbers showing that more Americans, by a margin of about 20 percentage points, say she’s not trustworthy rather than trustworthy. A late July CNN/ORC poll found that 58% of all registered voters say it is extremely important that the next president be honest and trustworthy.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, who chairs the House Select Committee on Benghazi and has pushed for Clinton’s emails for months, claimed credit for her decision to turn over the server.

“The revelation that Secretary Clinton exclusively used private email for official public business, and the multitude of issues that emanated from her decision, including this most recent one, demonstrates what can happen when Congress and those equally committed to exposing the truth, doggedly pursue facts and follow them,” he said in a statement.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said Clinton waited “a long time” before turning the server over.

“That’s a long time for top secret classified information to be held by an unauthorized person outside of an approved, secure government facility,” he said in a statement. “I look forward to the FBI answering my questions so the American people can be assured that everything has been done to protect our national security interests and hold accountable anyone who broke the rules.”

Still, it’s clear the GOP won’t stop hitting Clinton on the campaign trail, accusing her of secrecy over her decision to wait five months to turn over the server.

FBI investigating security of Clinton's email server

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement Tuesday night that releasing the server does little to answer questions about Clinton’s honesty.

“If Hillary Clinton believed in honesty and transparency, she would have turned over her secret server months ago to an independent arbiter, not as a last resort and to the Obama Justice Department,” he said. “Of course, if she really cares about transparency, she would never have had a secret server in the first place.”

Inside the latest Clinton email batch

Classified emails

Clinton’s decision to hand over the server comes as the intelligence community’s inspector general now says at least five emails stored on Clinton’s server contained classified information. The documents were from a “limited sampling” of her emails and among those 40 reviewed, said the inspector general, Charles McCullough III.

On Tuesday, McCullough sent four of the emails to chairs of several congressional committees. In a cover letter, he said two of the four emails included information that has now been classified up to top secret.

One of the five emails has since been declassified because it was no longer time-sensitive. The intelligence community maintains the remaining two contained classified material, but is deferring to the State Department on whether they should be identified as such.

McCullough said in the past that “none of the emails we reviewed had classification or dissemination markings,” but that some “should have been handled as classified, appropriately marked, and transmitted via a secure network.” The State Department has told McCullough that “there are potentially hundreds of classified emails within the approximately 30,000 provided by former Secretary Clinton.”

Republicans shared exclusively with CNN Tuesday a review of those emails that the State Department had released, which they said showed Clinton and her aides sent information that would later be classified to six people’s private email addresses. They include former Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns; Cheryl Mills, who was Clinton’s chief of staff at the State Department; and Jake Sullivan, who served as Clinton’s top foreign policy adviser. Clinton also emailed information that would later be classified to close confidant Sidney Blumenthal, whose communications with Clinton about Libya have become a focus of the House committee investigating the 2012 Benghazi attacks.

Hillary Clinton denies mishandling classified emails

“The fact that classified information was sent to and from Hillary Clinton to at least six separate individuals and potentially many more demonstrates just how big of a risk her decision to use a secret server poses to our national security,” Republican National Committee research director Raj Shah told CNN.

Emails released from Clinton’s private server heavily redacted

Widening probe

The probe into Clinton’s email practices has now expanded to include some of her top aides as part of a larger investigation on the use of private email accounts by previous secretaries of state. The Republican chairmen of three Senate committees – intelligence, homeland security and foreign relations – sent a joint request in March for both inspectors general to investigate the personal emails of Clinton’s aides.

“We will follow the facts wherever they lead, to include former aides and associates, as appropriate,” said Douglas Welty, a spokesman for the State Department’s inspector general.

In a July 17 letter to the State Department, Steve A. Linick, the State Department inspector general, said his office is reviewing “the use of personal communications hardware and software by five secretaries of state and their immediate staffs.” The Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General is assisting in the review.

One of the emails containing since-classified information was released to the public, prompting the intelligence community to ask the FBI to investigate the possible compromise of classified material. The State Department now has a team of analysts from the intelligence community to review Clinton’s emails before any more are released to the public.

Of the two top-secret emails sent to Congress on Tuesday, State Department spokesman John Kirby said they have not been released to the public and the department is “taking steps to ensure the information is protected and stored appropriately” while the determination was made.

“Department employees circulated these emails on unclassified systems in 2009 and 2011, and ultimately some were forwarded to Secretary Clinton,” Kirby said. “They were not marked as classified.”

FBI looking into Clinton’s email server security

CNN’s Evan Perez, Eric Bradner, Deirdre Walsh, Chris Frates, David Chalian and Dan Merica contributed to this report.