A Senate investigation says a senior U.S. diplomat deleted an untold number of work emails, unaware that even routine messages received and sent by a top government official should be saved.

The investigation, released Tuesday, says Michael Ratney, the former top U.S. diplomat in Jerusalem, found emails with attachments to be a nuisance. So, at times, he simply got rid of them to keep his inbox from breaching storage limits. Ratney, now the U.S. Special Envoy for Syria, didn’t know he was required to keep the messages, the report says.

The Federal Records Act requires the preservation of government records.

The disclosure of Ratney’s electronic housekeeping comes as Republican outrage mounts over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server for government business during her tenure as secretary of state.

(AP)