Hillary Clinton Private Email News: Impossible for White House to Have Missed Use of Private Email, Says Expert

It's virtually impossible for the White House not to know that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used a private email address during her tenure, according to an information security expert.

Clinton, the expert told Fox News, received sensitive White House email about top-level meetings.

"There would have been all kinds of correspondence that occurred about these," said the expert who was not named in the report. "Notices of meetings, agendas, outcome documents, action plans. Some of this would have been received by the Secretary's staff, but some of it would have gone directly to a private email address."

Clinton has been receiving criticism especially from Republicans about her use of a private email address. But she defended herself, claiming such practice was allowed under federal laws.

The expert said, "It would have been almost negligent not to have noticed" Clinton's practice.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest last week said President Obama was aware of Clinton's use of her email address but "was not aware of the details of how that e-mail address, and how that server, had been set up or how Secretary Clinton and her team were planning to comply with the Federal Records Act."

The expert said this kind of bureaucratic traffic is non-secret in nature but was meant to be sent and received only on government information systems.

Clinton previously said that she deleted about 30,000 emails that were personal including those pertaining to vacations and wedding of her daughter Chelsea.

The expert added that even if Clinton was exempted from rules when she used her personal email, this is "officially banned" under federal policies that bar government employees from using private email for official business.

"They are considered insecure," the expert said. "When you leverage Web mail these are just not there."

Since Clinton was a high-ranking government official during her time, she "would have been heavily targeted anyway" by hackers, the expert added.