With email, you don't need access to servers. Email requires the internet to send and receive, and communications can be scrubbed and copied just by sending them. That is how we used to track terrorists who sent emails before an attack while they were planning them. Key words would be detected and their email would be flagged for monitoring. They got smarter and just created drafts within an email provider and shared accounts. Without sending, the emails were never scrubbed by NSA.
The only need to have access to a server is to retrieve information that was never sent via email. Documents and files meant for intra office or internal accounting/plotting/storage/darknet info. This was never the case for Hilarity, because "emails" are sent through the internet and are already scrubbed.
I have friends/family that work CIA/Pentagon/NSA,politics and my college classmate is currently up for the Surgeon General position (and is an excellent choice might I add).
