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 Former Secretary of State Colin Powell blasted Donald Trump as a “national disgrace” and criticized repeated investigations into the 2012 attack in Benghazi as a “witch hunt” in personal emails leaked online by hackers. 
 
 Powell, a retired 4-star general and a Republican, confirmed the authenticity of the emails to NBC News. 
 
 "The hackers have a lot more," he added. 
 
 The contents of the emails were first reported by Buzzfeed News. It said the messages had been obtained by the website DCLeaks.com, which a federal law official told NBC News is believed to have ties to Russian intelligence services. 
 
 Powell called Trump a "national disgrace" and "international pariah" in a June 17 email to a former aide, saying the Republican presidential contender was "in the process of destroying himself, no need for Dems to attack him." 
 
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 A subsequent email to the same former aide on Aug. 21 slammed Trump for spurring the "racist" so-called "birther" movement — the consistently debunked rumor that President Barack Obama was born in another country. 
 
 "Yup, the whole birther movement was racist," Powell wrote, according to Buzzfeed. “That’s what the 99% believe. When Trump couldn’t keep that up he said he also wanted to see if the certificate noted that he was a Muslim." 
 
 There was no immediate response from the Trump campaign to the emails. 
 
 Powell in another email the same day dismissed Trump’s stated overtures to African-American voters. "There is nothing he can say that will sway black voters so he might as well say it to white folks," Powell wrote. 
 
 "He takes us for idiots," Powell, who is black, said in the email. “He can never overcome what he tried to do to Obama with his search for the birth certificate hoping to force Obama out of the Presidency. Or, demanding his school transcripts to see how he got into Harvard — (eg, affirmative action )." 
 
 Powell didn’t restrict his criticism to Trump. In a Dec. 17 email to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Powell said "Benghazi is a stupid witch hunt." 
 
 Led mostly by Republicans, eight Congressional investigations have been launched into the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate and another facility in Libya that left four Americans dead, including U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens. 
 
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 The House Select Committee on Benghazi report released in June found an array of bureaucratic miscues and inter-agency blunders but does not specifically blame former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. 
 
 Powell, in the 2015 email to Rice, said: "Basic fault falls on a courageous ambassador who thought Libyans now love me and I am ok in this very vulnerable place. But blame also rests on his leaders and supporters back here. Pat Kennedy, Intel community, DS and yes, HRC." 
 
 The revelations mark the latest in a string of headlines around Powell's email correspondence. His online activity has figured heavily of late into the controversy around Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server. 
 
 Powell expressed frustration about his name being linked to Clinton's email issues, writing in another leaked email: "I have told Hilleary’s [sic] minions repeatedly that they are making a mistake trying to drag me in, yet they still try," Powell wrote. 
 
 In July of 2015, Powell complained to his broker at Merrill Lynch that questions raised about Clinton’s email and speaking fees impacted his life — Powell said he had to disclose his past use of emails, and "I had a gig cancelled because the client, a public university, caught hell from overpaying HRC." 
 
 "HRC is the gift that keeps on taking," Powell wrote in the July 1, 2015 email, according to the leaked documents. 
 
 And Powell in a 2014 email said during a conversation about Hillary Clinton "I would rather not have to vote for her, although she is a friend I respect." 
 
 Powell, not referring to Clinton by name, then went on to apparently describe her as having "unbridled ambition, greedy, not transformational" along with some colorful references to her husband's rumored philandering, rumors he attributed to the New York Post. 
 
 While Powell has described himself as a lifelong Republican, he twice endorsed Obama — a Democrat — for president. ||||| Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell salutes the audience. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst 
 
 The Daily Caller can exclusively reveal that two years worth of emails have been stolen from former secretary of state Colin Powell’s personal email account. 
 
 The emails range from between June 2014 to August 2016. The most recent emails are dated August 19, 2016. 
 
 When asked for comment regarding the apparent hack, Powell replied: “I wasn’t aware of any infiltration of my Gmail account. If accurate my privacy has been violated.” 
 
 “As a private citizen I would hope journalists would respect that privacy,” he added. 
 
 The emails were given to hacktivist group DCLeaks by unnamed hackers. They emails are currently password protected. DCLeaks puts the total number of hacked Powell emails in their possession at around 30,000. 
 
 The Daily Caller was able to examine some of the hacked emails, which cover topics such as Donald Trump’s feud with the Khan family and Hillary Clinton’s email server. 
 
 The hacked emails reveal some people close to Powell expect him to endorse Hillary Clinton before the Nov. 8 election. 
 
 Former New Jersey governor Christie Whitman — a Republican who has said she will vote for Clinton over Trump — sent Powell an email in late July with the subject line, “Hillary.” 
 
 “Have you endorsed her yet?” the one line email said. 
 
 “Nope,” Powell replied. “By the way, if you have a WSJ today take a look at my piece on immigration. I can send it you missed. On Oped pages.” 
 
 “You’ll recall that in 2008 and 2012 I waited until early fall,” he added. 
 
 Powell confirmed the email chain’s legitimacy to TheDC. 
 
 On July 30, Powell emailed several people a link to a Huffington Post article on Trump’s then-budding feud with the Khans. 
 
 On August 2, longtime Powell friend and adviser Harlan Ullman asked Powell, “when are you going to throw the knock out blow?” 
 
 “I try not to bother someone who is beating himself and the GOP up. And please, don’t start bugging me like every newsie and getter in town,” Powell replied. “If and when I do it will be known.” 
 
 This is a developing story. Check back for updates. 
 
 Follow Hasson on Twitter @PeterJHasson ||||| Both Colin Powell, left, and his successor Condoleezza Rice have been contacted by the FBI regarding their own use of personal email during their respective tenures as secretary of state. | AP Photo FBI contacts Colin Powell as part of email probe The State Department finding of classified emails sent to other secretaries could give Clinton new cover 
 
 Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said the FBI has contacted him about his use of personal email when he was the nation's top diplomat, as a review conducted by the State Department inspector general concluded that Powell and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice both received classified information through private email accounts. 
 
 The revelation that the State Department now believes both Rice and Powell received sensitive information via private accounts could give former secretary Hillary Clinton a new line of defense as she tries to dampen the controversy over classified information found on her own private email server. 
 
 Story Continued Below 
 
 The State Department inquiry identified 10 messages sent to Rice's immediate staff that were classified and two sent to Powell, according to Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the ranking member on the House Oversight and Benghazi committees. 
 
 The emails, Cummings said, appear to have no classification markings, and it is still unclear if the content of the emails was or should have been considered classified when the emails were originally written and sent. 
 
 In an interview with POLITICO Thursday. Powell vigorously disputed the sensitivity of the information sent to him through personal email, but he acknowledged the law enforcement interest in his email routine. 
 
 "The FBI has come to us," Powell said. Two FBI agents visited Powell late last year for a discussion an aide described as a casual conversation about email practices during his term as secretary from 2001 to 2005. 
 
 Powell said the pair of messages State is now calling classified had come from two different U.S. ambassadors abroad. 
 
 "They’re fairly innocuous and very benign and neither ambassador classified them at the time. They were merely information memos sent to State.gov," Powell said. "My executive assistants thought they should send them to me on my personal email. I found that personally acceptable. That's why I bought all those computers in the first place." 
 
 Powell seemed exasperated by State's latest claim. The agency has designated the two messages "Confidential," which is the lowest tier of classification. 
 
 "Now, 11 or 12 years later, as part of a whole process of reviewing things somebody in the department says, 'Well, they're classified.' My response to that is no they were not," Powell said. " You can say your judgment is they should have been classified but at the time they were not classified. 
 
 Clinton's presidential campaign said the news and Powell's reaction reinforces their view that Clinton's messages are being overclassified and that the retroactive judgments to do that are unfair. 
 
 "We agree with Sec. Powell that his emails are being overclassified & they should be released along [with] Hillary's," Clinton campaign chair John Podesta said on Twitter. 
 
 Campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said that the disclosures about Powell and Rice's emails reveal the controversy over purportedly classified information on Clinton's emails is "bogus." 
 
 “This is a major development. In fact, I would go as far as to say it’s a game changer," Fallon said on MSNBC. "You have a government bureaucracy that has an excessive treatment of what should be considered classified information and now we’re finding that the same agency that has been looking into Hillary Clinton’s emails and having that excessive definition of what should be treated as classified is making the same judgment about Hillary Clinton’s predecessors...We think that any fair minded person if they judge the contents would see that this is overreach — this is excessive classification." 
 
 But conservative groups disputed that, saying Clinton's situation was significantly different than Powell's. They also pointed to the sheer volume of classified documents that passed through Clinton’s server, and noted that some classifications reached higher, more sensitive levels, including “top secret.” 
 
 “The fact remains Secretary Clinton is the only cabinet official to ever house and maintain a private server in her basement that contained all of her work and personal emails,” said Jeff Bechdel, America Rising PAC communications director, in a statement. “The security of that server and the risk it posed to national security is at the heart of the FBI's ongoing investigation — not 12-year-old emails sent to Secretaries of past administrations." 
 
 Rice has maintained she did not use email during her tenure as secretary. The messages sent to her apparently were emailed to her close aides. NBC News, which first reported State's conclusions said the ten messages sent to her are a mix of information classified at the "Confidential" level and the "Secret" level, which is the middle tier of classification. 
 
 An aide to Rice, Georgia Godfrey, said the messages in question did not contain intelligence reports but solely diplomatic exchanges. 
 
 "She did not use email as Secretary nor have a personal email account. My understanding is that the report is in reference to emails sent to her assistant reporting diplomatic conversations and they contained no intelligence information," Godfrey said in a statement. 
 
 Godfrey told POLITICO Rice had not been contacted by the FBI. 
 
 More than 1,600 of Clinton's messages have been deemed classified — although they were not marked that way when sent. Dozens have now been designated "Secret" or "Top Secret." 
 
 Cummings, a longtime defender of Clinton, held up the new information about the former secretaries as proof that the email controversy surrounding the 2016 Democratic frontrunner was overplayed. He blasted Republicans for trying to use the issue to hurt Clinton in the polls. 
 
 “My concern has been that Republicans are spending millions of taxpayer dollars singling out Secretary Clinton because she is running for President — often leaking inaccurate information — while at the same time disregarding the actions of Republican Secretaries of State,” Cummings said. “Based on this new revelation, it is clear that the Republican investigations are nothing more than a transparent political attempt to use taxpayer funds to target the Democratic candidate for President,” 
 
 Cummings indicated he has requested copies of the emails. 
 
 Rep. Eliot Engel, Ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the news proves that use of private email is a systematic problem in government — not just a Clinton problem. 
 
 “The truth couldn’t be plainer: the private-email problem is not a Hillary Clinton problem,” he said in a statement. “It’s a government-wide problem that’s existed since the advent of email itself. The manner in which sensitive information is dealt with just hasn’t kept up with advancements in technology. And that's the problem we should be focused on.” 
 
 The State inspector general has been reviewing the email practices of the five previous Secretaries of State. In a letter sent to Undersecretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy and shared Wednesday with Congress, the internal watchdog office expressed concerns that additional classified information may still reside on State’s unclassified archive of email messages. 
 
 State Department spokesman John Kirby declined to elaborate on the inspector general's findings but confirmed receiving the report. 
 
 "We’re in receipt of a letter from the IG regarding sensitive information....We’ll respond accordingly," Kirby said. "Obviously, we take the protection of sensitive information very seriously." 
 
 Powell also noted some ways his situation was different from Clinton’s, for example, that he used a commercial email account. “I had no private server, no private domain. I did not take [any messages] anywhere when I left the department,” he said. 
 
 Clinton’s messages resided on a private server that was kept mainly at her family home in Chappaqua, N.Y. She turned over about 30,000 such messages to the State Department at its request in late 2014 and discarded another roughly 32,000 messages deemed personal. 
 
 Powell did say that he believes the debate over Clinton’s emails is being colored by her presidential run. 
 
 “You know the politics,” he said. 
 
 Eliza Collins contributed to this report.
– The emails of a former United States secretary of state are again making headlines in the 2016 race, and this time Donald Trump is the one who won't be pleased. Hackers got into the personal account of Colin Powell, and the former secretary of state is revealed to have called Trump a "national disgrace" and an "international pariah" who peddles racist sentiment, reports BuzzFeed. The website says the emails were obtained by the site DCLeaks.com, which is suspected to have ties to Russian intelligence services, per the Wall Street Journal. A June 17 email calling him a "national disgrace" was to a former aide in which Powell adds that Trump was "in the process of destroying himself"—thus sparing Democrats lots of work. In another email to that same former aide on Aug. 21, Powell went after Trump as racist, citing his previous push to try to show Obama wasn't a US citizen. "Yup, the whole birther movement was racist," Powell wrote. "When Trump couldn't keep that up he said he also wanted to see if the certificate noted that he was a Muslim." In another, Powell tells CNN's Fareed Zakaria that he's reluctant to call out Trump publicly because it would backfire. “To go on and call him an idiot just emboldens him.” The former secretary of state confirmed the emails' authenticity to NBC News and said the hackers have more to come. In fact, the Daily Caller reports that hackers stole two years of Powell's emails, from June 2014 to August of this year.