“One shot at the queen” [updated]

Pamela Browne and Cahterine Herridge update their reportage on the little “security review” (as Clinton insists on calling it) that the FBI is conducting concerning Madam Hillary’s use of private, unsecured email server for her official business as Secretary of State (and perhaps even her destruction of 30,000 emails stored on the server). Browne’s new story is “‘One shote at the queen’: FBI, AG intensify focus on Clinton email probe.” We noted Del Wilber’s recent Los Angeles Times story reporting the FBI would be interviewing Clinton’s top aides and perhaps Clinton herself. Browne and Herridge add this:

As the FBI enters the final phases of its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of an unauthorized email server for government business, Attorney General Loretta Lynch and FBI Director James Comey are meeting frequently to discuss the progress and handling of the highly sensitive case, a source told Fox News.

Among the issues discussed in the meetings, which have been taking place several times per week, are who will be interviewed and in what order, according to an intelligence source close to the ongoing case. Emails released by the State Department have already shown Clinton and several key aides used the personal, unsecured network to send more than 1,000 messages which have been deemed classified.

“In a case like this you get one shot at the queen,” the source, who was not authorized to speak on the record, said referring to Clinton, the former secretary of state and current front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. “The pressures are enormous on the agents, as the case has to be airtight and perfect.”

Comey and Lynch are likely involved in daily briefings on the status of the explosive investigation, said Ron Hosko, former assistant director of the FBI’s criminal investigative division.

It is not clear to me whether “one shot at the queen” refers to interviewing her or making a case against her.

Consistent with Wilber’s article, Browne and Herridge also report that “[n]early a dozen people who worked with Clinton at State, as well as others linked to the Clinton family’s nonprofit foundation have received, or are expected to receive, formal interview requests from the bureau, the source told Fox News.”

That’s quite a little “security review” they’ve got going there.

PLEASE NOTE: Browne and Herridge continue to confuse matters by raising the question concerning who is or isn’t a “target of the investigation,” as Bret Baier also did in his brief interview with Clinton last month. This is a confusion that Andrew McCarthy has sought to clarify several times, as he did recently here.

UPDATE: Those who are reading the tea leaves will not want to miss Rachel Bade’s “Clinton aides unite on FBI legal strategy.” Quotable quote from Joe diGenova: “If it’s a serious case, you don’t run the risk of having all sorts of collusion between people — it’s just not done. If the department has accepted that, that tells me they’re walking down the line of not bringing a case, because they’re not serious if they have accepted that arrangement … They’ve thrown in the towel.”

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