DOJ: We Received Referral On "Potential Compromise Of Classified Information" Related To Clinton's Email

The Justice Department has received a referral about the potential mishandling of classified information related to Hillary Clinton's email account during her time as secretary of state.

"The Department has received a referral related to the potential compromise of classified information," a Justice Department official told BuzzFeed News. "It is not a criminal referral."

On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community has sent Congress a letter stating that Clinton sent four emails that should have been considered "secret" at the time.

Those emails should have been "transmitted via a secure network," the IG wrote in the letter to Congress, according to the Journal.

During her time as secretary of state, Clinton exclusively used a personal email account to conduct business; the account was housed on a private server. In December 2014, Clinton provided 55,000 pages of correspondence to the State Department. Those emails were reviewed and selected for submission by Clinton's own staff; afterward, Clinton deleted the emails that her staff deemed personal.

Some of those emails submitted to the State Department have been released to the public since then, including about 300 emails pertaining to Libya and the 2012 Benghazi attack. During the process of reviewing the email, State officials have upgraded the contents of some email to classified, though the information was not classified at the time.

The Libya emails have also come under scrutiny by lawmakers on a House committee that is investigating the Benghazi attack: Several emails or portions of emails that longtime Clinton adviser and confidant Sidney Blumenthal sent Clinton were not included in the emails.

Since the revelation of her personal email account, Clinton has said that she did not send or receive classified materials on the email account.