Hillary Clinton's Blackberry meme led to initial questions about her email

State Department open records staffers under Hillary Clinton reportedly didn't have a clue that the then-secretary of state used email until a picture of her staring down at a Blackberry -- shades on -- went viral. 

During a deposition at the State Department on Wednesday, Karin Lang, the director of the Executive Secretariat, said records staffers realized she might be using an email account when the picture was picked up by an instantly popular Tumblr blog, and went viral from there. 

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Lang also said that the official in charge of processing Freedom of Information Act requests at the time "was not aware of email usage by the former secretary."

The deposition is part of a lawsuit brought by conservative watchdog Judicial Watch that questions why Clinton set up a private server to handle her work email as secretary of state from 2009-13. 

The Tumblr blog "Texts From Hillary" compiled a select few photos of Clinton on her phone and matched them with photos of other famous people from Beyoncé to President Barack Obama, making up text conversations between the parties. 

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The 2012 blog got so popular that Clinton herself submitted to it.

Still, even after staffers noticed that Clinton might be using email, they only reiterated that the then-secretary of state did not use an email address ending in state.gov. 

Clinton's email use as secretary of state has become a topic of fervent discussion during her run to becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee for president this year. 

Conservative circles have raised questions about whether she discussed classified information on servers that might be hacked, and whether her use of a personal email server to conduct her work violated department or governmental policy in a significant way. 

Some, such as rival presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, have dismissed concerns over Clinton's email use. Clinton herself has called the use of a personal server "a mistake."

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