Comment by karmacondon

A rough analogy for this situation would be if a company had an "employees must use blackberries" policy, but the CFO of the company outright refused because he wanted to use his iPhone. Are they going to fire the CFO over that? Possible but not likely, especially if he is doing a good job otherwise.

In the same way, the Secretary of State can also refuse to comply with government policy (not law). You can't fire the Secretary of State for using the wrong email server. It just doesn't work that way. The fact that national security is involved does change things, but organizational politics is pretty much the same all over. If Clinton's email server contained the nuclear launch codes or the contents of Area 51 then the government would have handled it differently. It's unlikely that any lasting and serious security threats were exposed.