Hillary Clinton and her advisers had said in the past that Clinton already deleted her personal email messages during her tenure as secretary of state.
Clinton was placed under fire for using an unsecured private server in her correspondences while performing her duties as a top diplomat in the U.S. A court order had since then been issued which called for the State Department to release all of Clinton's more than 30,000 emails.
The private server in question is reportedly managed by Platte River, a company based in Denver. According to the company, they have no knowledge that the server was wiped. If this is true, it would mean that the several thousands of emails that Clinton admitted were deleted may still be retrieved.
"Platte River has no knowledge of the server being wiped," said Andy Boian, a spokesman for the company. "All the information we have is that the server wasn't wiped."
A deleted email is different from a wiped server. When an email is deleted or has been moved from a server, it gives the impression that the email can no longer be found on the device. However, experts tend to disagree as they argue that emails can still be recovered since data can still be found on the device. The recovery would of course depend on the condition of the server.
At a campaign event held last month in Las Vegas, Clinton was reportedly asked if the server in question may had been wiped.
"Like what, with a cloth?" said Clinton. "I don't know how it works digitally at all."
A wiped server would mean that all the data on the device, including those that have been deleted, are totally erased from the hard disk. In other words, they can no longer be retrieved.
"Wiping is designed to make the material that was underneath not recoverable," said Joseph Lorenzo Hall, chief technologist at the Center for Democracy and Technology. The latter is a nonpartisan group which supports Internet privacy.
Clinton already issued an apology for not using separate email accounts when making public and private correspondences.
"At the end of the day I am sorry that this has been confusing to people and has raised a lot of questions but there are answers to all these questions," said Clinton. "I certainly wish that I had made a different choice and I know why the American people have questions about it. I take responsibility. I should have had two accounts, one for personal and one for work-related."
Clinton is the front-runner of the Democratic Party's bid to win the presidential race in the November 2016 election. The controversy surrounding her email exchanges had somehow tainted her trustworthiness and had deeply affected her opinion polls rating.
