Jeb Bush used personal email to discuss security issues: Washington Post

The report followed revelations that Democrat Hillary Clinton, also seen as a likely presidential candidate, used a personal email account exclusively during her time as secretary of state, raising questions about security and transparency.

On his personal account, jeb@jeb.org, Bush discussed the Florida National Guard's movements and training activities as well as his decision to provide less security to nuclear power plants in the state, the newspaper reported.

Bush aides told the Post that none of the emails contained sensitive or classified information, and many of the events mentioned in them were documented in press accounts. But security experts say private email systems such as the one used by Bush are more vulnerable to hackers.

Democrats have attempted to divert the focus on Clinton's use of a personal email account to conduct work as U.S. secretary of state by saying that Bush used the same practice in Florida, where he was governor from 1999 to 2007.

Bush has released a few hundred thousand emails from his time as governor, and his aides say the rest are accessible by the state of Florida through freedom of information requests. He did not release emails he deemed private.

"There is no private, sensitive security information in the emails the Post is writing about and they don't cite any examples that weren't already public at the time," a Bush aide said told Reuters

"The information was non-classified and publicly reported. It was all subject to sunshine laws that were abided by."

A spokeswoman for the Florida secretary of state's office told the newspaper that an explanation of why some emails were released and others were withheld would be available next week. 

Bush denied on Friday he used a personal email address as governor to avoid public scrutiny.

"We complied with the law and we have now made my emails, long before Mrs. Clinton's issues came up, we made them public for you to see," he said. "So it's totally different."

(Reporting by Julia Edwards in Washington and Steve Holland in Dover, New Hampshire; Editing by Paul Simao, Robert Birsel)