Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz in a Tuesday hearing of the House science committee unequivocally denied he ever transmitted sensitive or classified information over a nongovernment email account.
The question was raised late in a two-hour budget hearing by Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.), who briefly held the gavel for Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas).
“Have you ever transmitted classified data over your personal account?” Palmer asked.
“Never,” Moniz replied.
Palmer raised the question, he said, because of news reports that said officials at DOE and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission used “personal” email addresses for official government business.
Moniz said he has two official email DOE accounts: one that is available to the public and vetted by an executive secretary, and one that is not available to the public, and which he uses to correspond directly and more privately with people about official business. The second address, Moniz said, is sometimes called a “personal” email.
“On the occasions where if I get an email to my [non-government] account that’s relevant to DOE business, I copy it to the government accounts, so there’s a record of everything,” Moniz told Palmer. “We can’t avoid receiving an email, but then the direction is that everything has to be copied to the government account.”
