Aide: Clinton opposed private emails accessible to 'anybody'

Abedin's comments provided new insight into the highly unusual decision by the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate to operate a private email server in her basement to conduct government business when she served as secretary of state.

[...] Clinton's private server contained tens of thousands of work-related emails as well as private messages, and her decision to conduct both private and government business on her system meant that she kept control of both types of correspondence, effectively preventing her State Department correspondence from being archived by the agency and made available for public records requests.

The Clinton campaign Wednesday criticized Judicial Watch for its role in filing several lawsuits against the State Department, among more than 30 filed by conservative legal groups and media outlets, including The Associated Press, to obtain Clinton documents.

Abedin, a senior aide during Clinton's entire tenure there, testified under oath that she never searched or was asked to search for documents in her State Department or her private Clinton email accounts in response to requests or lawsuits under the open records law.

Some federal agencies permit full-time FOIA staffers to search the inboxes of senior government officials, but many agencies expect officials to search their own accounts and no U.S. employee presumably would have had access to Abedin's personal account on Clinton's private server.