Attorney General Loretta Lynch testified to Congress yesterday that the matter of Hillary Clinton’s private email for official State Department business was under investigation by the FBI and career attorneys at the Department of Justice. Catherine Herridge and Pamela Browne report on Lynch’s testimony here.
Herridge and Brown add that the assignment of career DoJ attorneys to the case shows the FBI probe has progressed beyond the initial referral, or “matured,” giving agents access to the government’s full investigative tool box, including subpoena power for individuals, business or phone records, as well as witnesses. I will add on my own account that I hope those aren’t the same career attorneys who handled the investigation of the IRS’s misconduct.
I found Lynch’s testimony notable in one respect that Herridge and Browne overlook. Lynch did not adopt the misleading Clintonian euphemism referring to the criminal investigation as a “security review.” Herridge and Browne previously covered Clinton’s euphemism here. “Security review” should be a Clinton classic up there with “the meaning of ‘is.'”
Mark Hosenball now reports for Reuters:
U.S. spy agencies have told Congress that Hillary Clinton’s home computer server contained some emails that should have been treated as “top secret” because their wording matched sections of some of the government’s most highly classified documents, four sources familiar with the agency reports said.
The two reports are the first formal declarations by U.S. spy agencies detailing how they believe Clinton violated government rules when highly classified information in at least 22 email messages passed through her unsecured home server.
Hosenball’s article should be read in its entirety. Hosenball also notes, for example: “Two of the sources told Reuters that one of the reports on the emails came from the CIA. Three sources said the other report came from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA), which analyzes U.S. spy satellite intelligence.”
Hosenball sought comment from the Clinton campaign, which has previously dismissed such reports as politically inspired. Hosenball found Clinton less talkative at this point: “Clinton’s lawyer, David Kendall, did not respond to a request for comment. Clinton campaign spokespeople did not respond to multiple requests for comment.”
Earlier this week former NSA/CIA Director Michael Hayden commented on the matter in response to questions posed by Hugh Hewitt (posted here, audio below). Hugh has posted the transcript and audio of the entire interview at his own site here. Quotable quote: “I would lose all respect for scores of intelligence services around the world if they did not have all the access they wanted to that server.”
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