Hillary Clinton broke government rules when she used a private email server without approval while US secretary of state, an internal government watchdog says.
The long-awaited report by the State Department inspector general, which was released on Wednesday and is the first official audit of the controversial arrangement to be made public so far, was also critical of department record-keeping practices before Clinton's tenure.
It concluded that Clinton, now the front-runner in the race to become the Democratic presidential nominee, would not have been allowed to use the server in her home had she asked the department officials in charge of information security.
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The report undermined Clinton's defence of her private server.
She said it was allowed and that no permission was needed, although she has since apologised for the arrangement.
The report's highly critical findings included an account of State Department technology staff trying to raise concerns about Clinton's email arrangement in late 2010, but their supervisor in Clinton's office instructed them "never to speak of the Secretary's personal email system again", the report said.
Their supervisor told them that department lawyers had approved of the system, but the inspector general's office said it found no evidence this was true.
It immediately fuelled Republican criticism of Clinton in an already acrimonious race.
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Republicans have used Clinton's email practice to suggest she was trying to hide government records from scrutiny under public-access laws.
The report will also add to Democratic anxieties about voter perceptions of Clinton as untrustworthy and secretive.
The inspector general's report cited "longstanding, systemic weaknesses" with State Department records that predated Clinton's tenure, and found problems with the email record-keeping of some of her predecessors that failed to comply with the Federal Records Act.
But it singled out Clinton for her decision to use a private server in her home in Chappaqua, New York, for government business, apparently without seeking authorisation.
Brian Fallon, a Clinton spokesman, said the report rebutted criticisms of Clinton made by her political opponents.
"Contrary to the false theories advanced for some time now, the report notes that her use of personal email was known to officials within the Department during her tenure, and that there is no evidence of any successful breach of the Secretary's server," he said in a statement.
He did not address the report's criticism of her use of a private server.
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