HMM: Clinton lawyer balked at first effort to delete classified email.

Hillary Clinton’s personal attorney balked at the State Department’s first effort to erase a newly-classified email from the thumb drive containing about 30,000 messages she turned over to her former agency, according to just-released correspondence.

Clinton lawyer David Kendall said deleting the now-secret message could run afoul of promises he previously made to the House Benghazi committee and two inspectors general to preserve electronic copies of all Clinton’s work-related message from her tenure as secretary of state.

“I have responded to each preservation request by confirming to the requestor that I would take reasonable steps to preserve the 55,000 pages of former Secretary Clinton’s emails in their present electronic form,” Kendall wrote to Undersecretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy on June 15. “I therefore do not believe it would be prudent to delete, as you request, the above-referenced email from the master copies of the [Microsoft Outlook] PST file that we are preserving.”

The letters shed more light on the unusual arrangement State eventually set up to allow Kendall to hold classified information in his law office. The set-up — which has been questioned by Senate Republicans and private attorneys who’ve not received similar approval — involved installing a safe in the office of one of Kendall’s colleagues at D.C. law firm Williams and Connolly.

Shady.