Pence used private email account to conduct state business

Vice President Mike Pence used a private email account to conduct public business as Indiana's governor, according to public records obtained by The Indianapolis Star.

The newspaper reported Thursday that emails provided through a public records request show that Pence communicated with advisers through his personal AOL account on homeland security matters and security at the governor's residence during his four years as governor.

The vice president's spokesman, Marc Lotter, said Pence "maintained a state email account and a personal email account" like previous governors in the state. Pence, at the end of his term, directed outside counsel to review all of his communications to ensure that state-related emails were transferred and properly archived by the state., Lotter said.

As President Donald Trump's running mate, Pence frequently criticized rival Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server as President Barack Obama's secretary of state, accusing her of purposely keeping her emails out of public reach and shielding her from scrutiny.

Lotter said any comparison between the way Clinton and Pence handled email is "absurd" because Clinton had set up a private server in her home at the start of her tenure at the State Department and, unlike Clinton, Pence did not handle any classified material as Indiana's governor.

An FBI investigation found “no clear evidence” that Clinton intentionally violated laws, but did find that she and her team were “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.” Clinton also deleted more than 30,000 emails from the server that she claimed were personal.

But the governor's account faced security issues. Pence's AOL account was subjected to a phishing scheme last spring, before he was chosen by Trump to join the ticket. Pence's contacts were sent an email falsely claiming that the governor and his wife were stranded in the Philippines and needed money.

The governor moved to a different AOL account with additional security measures, Lotter said, but has since stopped using the new personal account since he was sworn-in as vice president.

The newspaper reported that the office of Pence's successor, Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb, released more than 30 pages from Pence's AOL account, but declined to release an unspecified number of emails because they were considered confidential.

Public officials are not barred from using personal email accounts under Indiana law, but the law is interpreted to mean that any official business conducted on private email must be retained to comply with public record laws.

The state requires all records pertaining to state business to be retained and available for public information requests. Emails involving state email accounts are captured on the state's servers, but any emails that Pence may have sent from his AOL account to another private account would need to be retained.

At the end of his term, Pence hired the Indianapolis law firm of Barnes & Thornburg to conduct a review of all of his communications and that review is still ongoing, Lotter said. Any correspondence between Pence's AOL account and any aides using a state email account would have been automatically archived, he said.