Liberal Forum

Hillary Clinton's emails with Colin Powell released.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell told his successor, Hillary Clinton, that he used his own personal computer to communicate with friends and foreign leaders and sent emails without going through the State Department server, according to emails released Wednesday by congressional Democrats.

"What I did do was have a personal computer that was hooked up to a private phone line (sounds ancient).

So I could communicate with a wide range of friends directly without it going through the State Department on their personal email accounts.

I did the same thing on the road in hotels," Powell wrote.

In the email exchange Powell wrote "there is a real danger."

"Government or not, to do business, it may become an official record and subject to the law," he said.

He added: "Be very careful ... I got around it all by not saying much and not using systems that captured the data."

Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee who released the full email exchange, said that it "shows that Secretary Powell advised Secretary Clinton with a detailed blueprint on how to skirt security rules and bypass requirements to preserve federal records."