The Washington Post reports that the State Department has contacted “dozens of current and former senior State Department officials” as part of an investigation into then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server.
As many as 130 officials have been contacted in recent weeks by State Department investigators — a list that includes senior officials who reported directly to Clinton as well as others in lower-level jobs whose emails were at some point relayed to her inbox, said current and former State Department officials. Those targeted were notified that emails they sent years ago have been retroactively classified and now constitute potential security violations, according to letters reviewed by The Washington Post.
In virtually all of the cases, potentially sensitive information, now recategorized as “classified,” was sent to Clinton’s unsecure inbox.
State Department investigators began contacting the former officials about 18 months ago, after President Trump’s election, and then seemed to drop the effort before picking it up in August, officials said.
The investigation actually began toward the end of the Obama administration. “This has nothing to do with who is in the White House,” said a senior State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about an ongoing probe. “This is about the time it took to go through millions of emails, which is about 3½ years.”
Despite the fact this has come to light now, “State Department officials vigorously denied there was any political motivation behind their actions, and said that the reviews of retroactively classified emails were conducted by career bureaucrats who did not know the names of the subjects being investigated.”
“The process is set up in a manner to completely avoid any appearance of political bias,” said a second senior State Department official, who was speaking on condition of anonymity to describe the mechanics of an internal probe.
Clinton’s use of a private email server during her term as secretary triggered multiple investigations by the State Department, the FBI and Congress. The bureau did not accuse her of breaking the law, but she blamed the FBI’s unusual public handling of the matter as a major factor in her loss in the 2016 election.
Some on the left are crying foul, of course. By law, Clinton should have been held accountable for mishandling classified information, and James Comey had planned to exonerate her before the investigation was even over. The fact that the investigation has even continued is only due to the fact that Hillary Clinton lost in 2016.
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