Colin Powell advised Hillary Clinton on private emails, new documents show

Colin Powell did advise Hillary Clinton on private email and computer use, a new release of Clinton's personal emails shows.

"I had an ancient version of a PDA and used it," Powell said in an email exchange with Clinton, from 2009, dated two days after Clinton was sworn in as secretary of state.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee released the message.

"If it is public that you have a Blackberry," Powell wrote, "it may become an official record and subject to the law."

"Be very careful," Powell continued. "I got around it all by not saying much and not using systems that captured the data," referring to the government systems the captured the contents of messages.

See Powell and Clinton together:

Cummings is also the ranking member -- and staunch critic -- of the House Select Committee on Benghazi chaired by Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., that has looked extensively into Clinton's tenure as secretary of state.

"The Republican obsession with Secretary Clinton has reached a fever pitch, and they have been using taxpayer resources to single her out in a desperate and abusive attempt to hurt her presidential campaign," said Cummings.

According to Cummings, the exchange shows Powell gave "a detailed blueprint on how to skirt security rules and bypass requirements to preserve federal records, although Secretary Clinton has made clear that she did not rely on this advice."

The exchange "also illustrates the longstanding problem that no secretary of state ever used an official unclassified email account until the current secretary of state," said Cummings, referring to John Kerry.

Powell in the past has said he has little to no memory of advising Clinton on these matters. Powell, a Republican, served as secretary of state from 2001 to 2005, but endorsed Barack Obama for president in 2008 and 2012.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has been consistently critical of Clinton on this issue.

"We have a country where you have Hillary Clinton with her emails that nobody's ever seen where she deletes 33,000 emails, and that's after getting a subpoena from Congress," Trump said Wednesday night at NBC's Commander-in-Chief Forum. "If you do that in private business, you get thrown in jail."

Related: See Hillary Clinton through the years:

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