July 23, 2014: Clinton’s lawyers are sent some of Clinton’s emails so they can begin sorting them.
Unnamed employees at Platte River Networks (PRN), the company managing Clinton’s private server, discuss in an email sending copies of Clinton’s emails from when she was secretary of state overnight to Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s former chief of staff. A company spokesperson will later confirm that the company did begin sending the emails to Mills around this time. (The Washington Post, 9/22/2015)
A September 2016 FBI report will confirm that PRN sent some of Clinton’s emails in response to a request from Mills, but only those which were sent to or received from a .gov email address while Clinton was secretary of state. An unnamed PRN employee remotely transferred a .pst file containing the emails onto the laptops of Mills and Heather Samuelson (another Clinton lawyer) via ScreenConnect. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/2/2016)
Two weeks after the FBI report is released, an email reported in the media will reveal that on this day, PRN employee Paul Combetta overrnighted DVDs of data from Clinton’s server to Clinton Executive Services Corp. (CESC), a Clinton family company. The exact shipping charge of $46.38 is mentioned in the email. (The New York Post, 9/18/2016)
It is unclear if this is in addition to the files being transferred over the Internet as described by the FBI, or instead of it. Combetta will claim in a September 2015 FBI interview that he ultimately never sent the DVD and only sent the data over the Internet. However, this may not settle the question, because Combetta will be interviewed three times and his answers will often be inacurate and/or contradictory. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/23/2016)
July 2014 is the same month the State Department first informally requests Clinton’s emails. Mills and Samuelson will be two of three Clinton associates who sort through which emails to turn over and which to delete, along with Clinton’s personal lawyer David Kendall.
In late September 2014, PRN will send the rest of Clinton’s known emails to Mills and Samuelson.