Category Archives: Clinton Fraud

Another one at Hillary’s State Dept Moonlighted?

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Sheesh, the list grows. Seems all kinds of State Department personnel under Hillary’s term had multiple jobs, paychecks and assignments. Maybe we need to question what Hillary actually did…oh wait….

Ethics? Nah…no one talked about ethics…by the way, Cheryl Mills is a lawyer. Oh yeah, one other item, she worked for Oprah in charge of Corporate Policy and Public Planning as a Senior Vice President.

Top Clinton aide worked on Abu Dhabi project while at State

TheHill: Hilary Clinton’s former chief of staff spent some of her time at the State Department working part time to build a campus for New York University (NYU) in Abu Dhabi.

Cheryl Mills disclosed the details of the special arrangement — which are likely to raise additional questions about top government officials who split their time between official and private work — in an interview with The Washington Post published on Monday.

Mills worked “very hard” to stick to State Department rules preventing conflict of interest, she said in the interview.

“I try to understand the rules and follow them. And I try to make sure that I’m disclosing my obligations,” Mills said. “I don’t know if I’m ever perfect. But I was obviously trying very hard to make sure I was following those rules and guidelines.”

Mills served as Clinton’s chief of staff during the Democratic presidential candidate’s time as secretary of State.

During her first four months with the State Department, Mills worked part time with NYU to set up its new campus in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The government during those four months dit not pay her.

As she explained to the Post, the job was primarily to coordinate the construction of a new facility in the Persian Gulf metropolis, and navigate the cultural and administrative barriers that presented themselves.

“The UAE’s culture is very different than ours,” she told the Post.

“We had to have extensive discussions and negotiations to step through how this university could exist consistent with their framework, how we ensured the right protections for faculty and for students as they did their work.”

The revelation comes amid heightened scrutiny on the work arrangements for Clinton’s former top aides.

In addition to Mills, longtime Clinton confidante Huma Abedin also received permission to work for an outside firm while employed at the State Department. Abedin’s decision to split her time between the government and a private consulting firm have led to allegations about a possible conflict of interest.

In her discussion with the Post, Mills said that did not recall the State Department’s ethics office flagging any questions about her unusual work arrangement.

“There was nothing special, if you were, about me,” she said.

Mills continued to work with NYU and to sit on outside boards because she initially intended to leave the government after helping with the transition. Once Clinton convinced her to stay, Mills said she began to “wind down those obligations.”

This summer, Mills sat down before the House Select Committee on Benghazi to answer questions for nine hours behind closed doors. Democrats have said they intend to make the transcript of that testimony public this week, despite the objections of the committee’s GOP leaders.

Concerns about outside obligations on Mills and Abedin have compounded existing criticism against Clinton for her use of a personal email address and private server while serving as secretary of State.

In her Post interview, Mills declined to offer any new information about the server or the ongoing FBI investigation into whether any classified information was improperly handled.

She largely echoed Clinton’s explanation that she had used the server purely out of habit.

“I wish there had been a lot more thought and deliberation around it, but I can’t tell you that I can offer you that insight that there was,” she said.

 

 

Look Who Hillary Hired for Benghazi Help

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Richard Verma: Presently in India selling a ‘people to people cooperation’ to tackle climate change, Verma was nominated by Obama to serve as Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs when he left in 2011. He is a lawyer at Steptoe & Johnson and was an advisor to Harry Reid from 2002-2007.

Oh, then there were some Hillary and Richard Verma email exchanges with particular questions to the matter of the Russian reset in 2010.

Clinton tapped D.C. lawyer to help respond to Benghazi questions

*Richard Verma had ‘special government employee’ designation

*He worked at State Department while retaining his job at a law firm

*State Department inspector general launched inquiry into the program

WASHINGTON by Anita Kumar, McClatchy

Hillary Clinton tapped a former State Department employee to help respond to various inquires from Capitol Hill after the 2012 fatal attacks in Benghazi, Libya, at the same he was being paid by his law firm.

Richard Verma was designated a “special government employee,” allowing him to work at the department as well as at Steptoe & Johnson law firm, according to an email he wrote that was obtained by Citizens United, a conservative group that has filed lawsuits to access records from the State Department.

The arrangement has prompted additional questions about the way the federal program at the State Department was used while Clinton served as secretary of state.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has long been concerned about the use of the program, which was supposed to be designed to allow the government to bring aboard outside talent to fill voids in its expertise.

“It’s not clear that responding to congressional inquiries is how the special employee designation was meant to be used,” Grassley said Thursday. “It was designed to get special expertise that the government can’t get in-house. Agencies already have congressional affairs staff who are employed to help respond to congressional inquiries. The State Department has stretched the definition in several cases.”

A similar arrangement involving another of Clinton’s closest confidants, Huma Abedin, led the State Department inspector general to launch a review into the department’s use of the designation and, apparently, whether it was abused in the hiring of Abedin, who was working at the State Department and Teneo, a company that provides political intelligence to clients.

In August, Grassley asked the FBI whether the inspector general’s office had notified the bureau of any inquiry into Abedin that had evolved into “a full-fledged criminal investigation.” The FBI referred Grassley to the inspector general.

The inspector general’s office declined to comment Thursday on the status of its inquiry.

“The special government employee designation is not limited to specific types of position descriptions,” State Department spokesman Alec Gerlach said.

Clinton campaign officials did not respond to requests for comment.

Grassley has been asking whether the State Department’s “excessive use” of the program undermines government ethical standards, because conflicts of interest can arise when a government employee is simultaneously working for a private contractor.

Revelations of private email use and multiple jobs held at the same time by one individual raised more questions. Now, more details are coming in, and they warrant more questions. The bottom line is still whether the taxpayers are well-served by agency practices and spending. No one will know for sure until the State Department is more transparent about how it operates. Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley

The inspector general told him in a letter that the office would examine whether the program “conforms to applicable legal and policy requirements” and safeguards against any possible conflicts of interest. The employees may or may not be paid.

Clinton, now the front-runner for the 2016 Democratic nomination for president, has been under fire for actions at the State Department, including exclusively using a personal email account for government work, as well as her response to the attacks in Benghazi that led to four deaths, including the ambassador.

Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, asked Verma, now U.S. ambassador to India, to help respond to various congressional requests related to Libya because of his background working on Capitol Hill, according to the Verma email of Oct. 12, 2012, in which he outlined his job arrangement.

“Cheryl thought my prior experience handling investigations and my work on the Hill would be useful in advising the team as they process requests,” he wrote to two State Department officials.

Verma, a former assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs, led the State Department’s efforts on Capitol Hill and served as a senior member of Clinton’s team.

His unpaid advisory role began Oct. 1, 2012. Verma said he would spend two to three hours a day discussing issues, primarily with the State Department legislative team. The designation is given on an annual basis, according to the department, but Verma said he had expected to work for 60 days.

In his email, Verma indicated he was issued a State Department identification, email account and Blackberry so he could keep his responsibilities apart from his full-time job. He had been working on President Obama’s re-election campaign but stopped when he went back to the State Department.

As we discussed, any political activities that I undertake must be done on my personal time, and not involve government resources. I obviously have followed that guidance strictly. Richard Verma in a letter to the State Department

Citizens United began filing Freedom of Information Act requests at the State Department last year in hopes of getting enough information to produce a documentary about Clinton. They have sued the State Department for unresponsive requests multiple times.

Obama nominated Verma, who also had worked at Albright Stonebridge Group and the Center for American Progress, to be ambassador in September 2014, more than a year after Clinton had left the State Department. He had also worked as a senior national security adviser, counsel and foreign policy adviser to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election/article38260920.html#emlnl=Morning_Newsletter#storylink=cpy
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election/article38260920.html#emlnl=Morning_Newsletter#storylink=cpy

Delivered Documents Go Deeper on Clintons’

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There is no longer doubt that certain personnel at the State Department were in collusion with the Clintons, but this time on the Foundation side and with regard to Bill giving speeches for big money.

Each time there was a speech request for Bill, the procedure was to pass the full speech application request to the State Department to determine if the sponsors were acceptable and approved. A database is maintained at State for diplomatic purposes on global and domestic corporations such that the speech requests would be only somewhat investigated. This also gives rise to the fact that government and especially corporations use the State Department and likewise in reverse to advance mutual relationships, agendas and of course money is always involved. Thanks to Judicial Watch for their tireless work as noted below.

 

Clinton Cash Connections Exposed – New Docs Raise Questions On Clinton Conflicts of Interest

 

The Clinton email scandal is serious enough. Nonetheless, it is useful to remember what exactly Mrs. Clinton was trying to hide before our litigation forced the disclosure of her separate email system. You can bet that the cover up of the depth of her abuse of office for private gain is one thing about which she does not want you to know the full truth. Judicial Watch is in the lead in uncovering these Clinton cash abuses. This week, we released 789 pages of State Department “ethics” review documents concerning former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, revealing that at least one speech by Bill Clinton appeared to take place without the required State Department ethics approval. The documents also include a copy of Bill Clinton’s draft consultant agreement with Laureate Education, Inc., which was submitted for ethics review by the State Department. But the State Department redacted the information regarding compensation and the specific services Bill Clinton was hired to provide to the controversial “for profit” education company. The documents were released as a result of a federal court order in our history-making Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed against the State Department on May 28, 2013, (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:13-cv-00772)). The documents include heavily redacted emails from 2009 about the review of a speech Bill Clinton was set to give to the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI). An April 1, 2009, email from then-State Department Senior Ethics Counsel Waldo W. “Chip” Brooks notes that the ethics review approval of the speech “was in the hands of Jim [Thessin] and Cheryl Mills. They were to discuss with Counsel to the former President. I do not know if either ever did.” A follow-up September 1, 2009, email to Brooks from a colleague asks, “[W]as there ever a decision on the Clinton request involving scrap recycling? Below is the last e-mail I have on it – I assume it just died since I don’t’ have an outgoing memo approving the event …” Brooks responds two minutes later:

“I think the decision was a soft call to Clinton’s attorney and the talk did not take place. You might want to send an email to [Clinton Foundation Director of Scheduling and Advance] Terry [Krinvic] and tell her that you have a gap in your records because you were gone and wanted to know if the President ever did talk before ISRI?

In fact, Bill Clinton spoke to the scrap recycling group on April 30, 2009, for a reported fee off $250,000. The documents also include a request from Doug Band of the Clinton Foundation for an ethics review of Mr. Clinton’s proposed consulting arrangement, through WJC LLC, with Laureate Education, Inc. The Obama State Department redacted key terms of the attached May 1, 2010, draft agreement, including Mr. Clinton’s fees and the nature of Mr. Clinton’s services. Laureate Education, Inc. is the world’s largest, for-profit, international higher education chain and reportedly uses many of the same practices that spurred a 2014 regulatory crackdown by the Obama administration on for-profit colleges in the United States. In 2010, according to The Washington Post, the company hired former President Clinton to serve as its honorary chancellor, and since that time the former president has made more than a dozen appearances in countries such as Malaysia, Peru, and Spain on the company’s behalf. Since 2010, the former president reportedly has been paid more than $16 million from the company for his services. The Clinton-Laureate connection is rich. The Daily Caller did some digging into the Clinton tax returns that were highly revealing:

Clinton signed on as the honorary chancellor of Laureate International Universities, a subsidiary of Laureate Education, in 2010. Despite the honorary nature of his position, that didn’t stop the company from paying him on average approximately $3 million a year. The investment likely paid off, though, as Clinton has lent Laureate significant legitimacy and has served as an advocate for the company overseas, making appearance in countries like Peru and Malaysia to praise it. In addition to these direct payments, Laureate also donated to the Clinton Foundation and has cooperated with the Clinton Global Initiative.

The latest State Department documents also show some push-back by ethics officials concerning proposed Clinton speeches to Chinese government-linked entities. State Department officials, for example, had several questions about a proposed 2009 speech to a subsidiary of the Shanghai Sports Development Corporation, a Chinese “quasi-government” agency. Rather than answer the questions, the Clinton Foundation representative emailed “we are not going to proceed with this.” State Department ethics official “Chip” Brooks commented on the withdrawal of the Chinese speech in December 2009 to then-Deputy Legal Adviser Jim Thessin, “Cooler heads have prevailed.” The documents show the State Department approved scores of requests by former President Bill Clinton to appear as the featured speaker at events sponsored by some of the world’s leading international investment and banking firms, including J.P. Morgan, Barclays, Merrill Lynch, Sweden’s ABG, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Brazil’s Banco Itau, Vista Equity Partners, Goldman Sachs, Vanguard Group (described as “one of the world’s largest investment management companies”), Canada’s Imperial Bank of Commerce, and Saudi Arabia’s SAGIA conglomerate (which claims to be the “gateway to investments in Saudi Arabia”). While the majority of the documents do not contain the fees that Clinton charged for his speaking services, those that are disclosed reveal that the former president routinely received six-figure honorariums for his advice to the international investment counseling firms and banking institutions, including:

  • Barclays Capital Singapore – $325,000 • Needham Partners South Africa – $350,000 • Cumbre de Negocios (sponsored by Nacional Financiera and El Banco Fuerte de Mexico) – $275,000 and $125,000) • NTRPLC (which describes itself as “developing a new investment portfolio of wind projects in Ireland and the UK”) – $125,000

The documents reveal that between 2009 and 2011, former President Clinton spoke to more than two dozen leading international investment firms and banking institutions, many of them on more than one occasion. At least one of the documents shows that Hillary Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills used a non-governmental email account for the Clinton ethics reviews. Mills reportedly negotiated the “ethics agreement” on behalf of the Clintons and the Foundation that required the Clintons to submit to rigorous conflict-of-interest checks. Despite this, and in apparent violation of Obama administration ethics rules, the documents reveal that Bill Clinton’s requests for speaking engagement approval were invariably copied to Mills, who was involved in ethics reviews as chief of staff for Mrs. Clinton at the State Department. The documents also include the demands that Bill Clinton’s speakers bureau, The Harry Walker Agency, laid out for a speech sponsor in Slovenia. Notably, the documents require that press be kept in a “designated, roped off area in the back of the room with a staff escort” and that the “press should not be given access to any area where the President likely may be.” This JW lawsuit broke open the Clinton cash scandal by forcing the disclosure of documents that provided a road map for over 200 conflict-of-interest rulings that led to at least $48 million for the Clintons and the Clinton Foundation during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of State. Previously disclosed documents in this lawsuit, for example, raise questions about funds Clinton accepted from entities linked to Saudi Arabia, China and Iran, among others. This and other JW lawsuits on Benghazi were the key pressure that forced the disclosure of the Clinton email system. Judicial Watch’s litigation to obtain these conflict of interest records is ongoing. The State Department has yet to search the email records Mrs. Clinton purportedly turned over to the agency last year, despite Judicial Watch’s first requesting these records in 2011 and filing this lawsuit in 2013. The State Department also has yet to explain why it failed to conduct a proper, timely search in the 20 months between when it received our request on May 2, 2011, and February 1, 2013, when Secretary Clinton left office. Judicial Watch also is pressing the State Department to conduct a reasonable search for records, including any emails on the Hillary Clinton email server. On September 3, Judicial Watch filed a request with the court for discovery from the State Department and/or Mrs. Clinton in order to find these records so they might finally be searched as the law requires. Specifically, Judicial Watch’s attorneys ask the court to take steps to obtain the records directly:

To the extent Secretary Clinton or her agents or vendors continue to have access to this agency system of records, or any records from the system that have migrated or been transferred to any new servers, storage devices, or back-up systems, Judicial Watch respectfully submits that a constructive trust must be imposed on any such records and systems so that the State Department can access and search them for records…

Accordingly, Judicial Watch asks the court to order the State Department:

To identify, either through declarations or discovery, all information in its possession or control about the transfer of any data from the “clintonemail.com” server to Secretary Clinton’s vendor and whether any such data is still available or otherwise recoverable from the vendor’s server, storage devices, or back-up systems. If the State Department asserts that it does not have this information or cannot obtain it, limited third-party discovery of Secretary Clinton and/or her vendor should be authorized to enable the Court to obtain the information, which is necessary to remedy the State Department’s failure to search the server during Secretary Clinton’s tenure in office, its further failure to secure all federal records on the server when Secretary Clinton left office, and Secretary Clinton’s wrongful retention of these records after she left office.

Judicial Watch’s court filing details how it was “wrongful and in violation of federal law and State Department regulations” to allow Hillary Clinton “to retain exclusive access to this agency system of records (Clinton’s separate email server) and the official State Department communications and records it contains after she left office on February 1, 2013.” In short, we’re asking the court to allow us to figure out where the Clinton documents are and to take steps to make sure they are preserved and searched as the law requires. These records show that the “ethics reviews” of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s potential conflicts of interest was a joke. JW supporters should be proud of how their support resulted in a lawsuit that helped force the disclosure of Hillary Clinton’s separate email system. And now we hope that it results in getting all the Clinton emails searched to find out what else Hillary Clinton didn’t want the American people to see about her shady dealings. Judicial Watch’s FOIA lawsuit has become particularly noteworthy because it has been reported that the Clinton Foundation, now known as the Bill, Hillary, & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, accepted millions of dollars from at least seven foreign governments while Mrs. Clinton served as secretary of State. The Clinton Foundation has acknowledged that a $500,000 donation it received from the government of Algeria while Mrs. Clinton served as secretary of State violated a 2008 ethics agreement between the foundation and the Obama administration. Some of the foreign governments that have made donations to the Clinton Foundation include Algeria, Kuwait, Qatar, and Oman, have questionable human rights records. Links to the full production of documents can be found here: May 4, 2015; June 15, 2015; July 27, 2015 and September 4, 2015. Feel free to review the documents and let us know if you find anything important that we might have missed!

Written Sword by Trey Gowdy to Elijah Cummings

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Full letter is found here.

The Blaze: Trey Gowdy Calls Out Ranking Dem on Benghazi Committee in Scathing 13-Page Letter: ‘This Information Could Have Only From Democrat Members’

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), chairman of the House Benghazi Committee, sent a scathing 13-page letter to Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) on Wednesday, urging him to “rise above the political pressure” being put on him by Democrats and keep the “promises” made to the families of the American heroes who died in Libya.

Gowdy scolded Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the Benghazi Committee, for putting on a “public posture” that is “quite the opposite” from the one he has taken during private discussions.

“Not once in any of these conversations have you ever questioned the motivations of the Committee’s work or questioned our mission to uncover the facts surrounding the Benghazi terrorist attacks,” Gowdy wrote. “Your Democrat colleagues and you have contributed nothing substantively to the Committee’s investigation over the past seventeen months—you have not requested a single new witness interview nor have you made one single document request to any Executive Branch Agency.”

The fiery South Carolina congressman then accused Cummings and Democrats of “selectively” leaking information about the Benghazi Committee’s probe “to promote your own false narrative.”

Cummings and other Democrats wrote their own letter on Monday accusing the Republicans of using Benghazi as a political weapon and revealed they plan to release the transcript of an interview with Cheryl Mills to “correct the public record.”

“This is glaringly obvious—no testimony has been disclosed from people interviewed who were on the ground or from national security professionals,” he added .”Instead, the only leaks have been regarding Democrat political figures, and the initial stories have all selectively disclosed testimony to fit with Democrat political narratives.”

He provided a specific instance where information appeared to be intentionally leaked:

House Benghazi Committee

Gowdy concluded his letter by vowing to finish the Benghazi Committee’s investigation.

“While it is unfortunate that for over seven months the State Department withheld nearly 1,900 pages of Secretary Clinton’s emails responsive to this Committee’s request, our work must go on,” he wrote. “Simply because you have chosen to play politics with this Committee and the State Department has chosen to play politics by shielding its former Secretary at the expense of the truth does not mean that this Committee was founded on politics, is based on politics, or will veer off course due to the political actions and allegations of others.”

Read the last things he had to say before he signed his name:

House Benghazi Committee

The full letter can be found here.

Hillary, Write a Fat Check to the FBI/Benghazi Cmte.

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Taxpayers are on the hook for this malfeasance and dereliction of duty and reckless behavior, so the entire bill as it accumulates needs to be paid by Hillary. Ever wonder why she did this? My bet is to keep from responding to Freedom of Information Act requests and to keep information from the White House…cant prove but she has a history of being cunning.

It is time for a special prosecutor, voters…DEMAND IT

Employees at company working with Clinton email server expressed concerns

Washington (CNN)Employees at the company that maintained Hillary Clinton’s private email server expressed concern among themselves about the way the former secretary of state’s team directed them to manage data backups after the FBI started looking into the arrangements, according to emails obtained by a senator.

In a letter obtained by CNN, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, asks Datto, Inc, the makers of Clinton’s server back-up system, for information on how her emails were preserved and protected. The FBI has also sought information from the company, according to sources.

Johnson indicates that a “Clinton family company,” Clinton Executive Service Corp., paid for the back-up services, operated through a device called the Datto SIRIS S2000, and that the purchase was made by Platte River Networks when the server was moved from her private residence to a New Jersey-based data center in 2013.

7 photos: Hillary Clinton email controversy

In the letter, Johnson quotes from emails sent by and to employees at Platte River Networks, which indicate there was discussion about how the duration of data backups could be reduced, apparently at the direction of the Clinton Executive Service Corp.

Clinton on emails: ‘It is a drip-drip-drip’

Then this past August, a Platte River Networks employee wrote to a coworker that he was, “Starting to think this whole thing really is covering up some shaddy (sic) s**t.”

“I just think if we have it in writing that they told us to cut the backups, and that we can go public with our statement saying we have backups since day one, then we were told to trim to 30days (sic), it would make us look a WHOLE LOT better,” the unnamed employee continued.

The email was sent shortly after news emerged that the FBI was looking into the security of the server, and several months after it was revealed that Clinton exclusively used the private account to conduct State Department business.

The employee indicates in the email that Clinton’s team asked them to change the back-up duration between October and February, presumably of 2014/2015, though that isn’t explicitly stated in the portion of the email included in Johnson’s letter.

Clinton’s email controversy explained

In a statement Wednesday morning, the Clinton campaign accused Johnson of “ripping a page from the House Benghazi Committee’s playbook and mounting his own, taxpayer-funded sham of an investigation with the sole purpose of attacking Hillary Clinton politically.”

“The Justice Department’s independent review is led by nonpolitical, career professionals, and Ron Johnson has no business interfering with it for his own partisan ends,” campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said in the statement.

The committee did not share any of the emails with CNN, but excerpts and descriptions from them are printed in Johnson’s letter.

Emails sent between Datto and Platte River Networks during that time indicate there was confusion about where the backed-up data would be stored, and for a while it was backed-up to an off-site Datto server, apparently against the wishes of Clinton staff.

When Platte River Networks became aware of the off-site syncing issue, they contacted Datto and discussed how they could retrieve that data for storage on-site, according to Johnson’s letter.

“Despite these communications, it is unclear whether or not this course of action was followed,” Johnson said. “Additionally,questions still remain as to whether Datto actually transferred the data from its off-site datacenter to the on-site server, what data was backed up and whether Datto wiped the data after it was transferred.”

Johnson wrote to Datto seeking more information about their dealings with Platte River Networks and Clinton Executive Service Corp.

Johnson also asked the company to say whether Datto is authorized to store classified information, and whether any employees at the company have security clearances that would allow them to view classified information.

 

FBI seizes four State Department servers in Clinton email probe

The FBI has seized four State Department computer servers as part of its probe into how classified information was compromised on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email system, according to people familiar with the investigation.

The four servers, which were located at the State Department’s headquarters building, were seized by the FBI several weeks ago. They are being checked by technical forensic analysts charged with determining how Top Secret material was sent to Clinton’s private email by State Department aides during her tenure as secretary from 2009 to 2013, said two people familiar with the probe. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because it is an ongoing investigation.

State Department spokesman John Kirby referred questions about the computer servers to the FBI. An FBI spokeswoman, Carol Cratty, declined to comment.

No other details about the servers, including whether they are part of the department’s classified system, or used for unclassified information networks, could be learned.

A spokesman for the Clinton campaign did not respond to an email request for comment.

Clinton has offered varying explanations for her use of a private email server, initially claiming she had done nothing wrong. Then, under pressure from critics, she said she was sorry people were confused by the practice, later admitting in early September that her use of a private email system had been a mistake.

The State Department uses two separate networks, one for classified information and one for unclassified information. The two networks are kept separate for security reasons. Most classified networks are equipped with audit systems that allow security managers to check who has accessed intelligence or foreign policy secrets.

The FBI is trying to determine the origin of the highly classified information that was found in Clinton emails.

However, the task is said to be complicated because those with authority to create classified information have broad authority to label information in one of three categories: Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret.

The FBI is primarily concerned with trying to determine how Top Secret information made its way on to the private server.

Chris Farrell, an investigator with the public interest legal group Judicial Watch, said the State Department has been reluctant to describe the nature of its computer networks as some of the 16 Freedom of Information Act lawsuits the group has filed make their way through the courts.

Farrell said in an interview that the department also has been unwilling to say whether the private email system, used by Clinton and close aides Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, should be considered an official State Department network covered by FOIA laws.

Farrell said the seizure of the four State Department servers is likely part of the forensic investigation underway by the FBI into hardware used by Clinton and her aides to send email to the private server.

“In the midst of what I believe to be a forensic examination of the hardware that [Clinton lawyer David] Kendall surrendered on behalf of Mrs. Clinton, any serious national security investigation would seek to track all emails inbound and outbound,” Farrell said. “If they are doing that tracking of email since she was secretary of state, then they would be looking at any email that could have crossed into a State server.”

The servers were part of the State Department bureau of information resource management.

The bureau helps the department “to successfully carry out its foreign policy mission by applying modern IT tools, approaches, systems, and information products.”

In addition to improving efforts of “transparent, interconnected diplomacy,” the bureau is “focused on enhancing security for the department’s computer and communications systems.”

The FBI probe of State Department servers is the latest disclosure on the criminal investigation into the private Clinton email server that has embroiled the leading Democratic presidential candidate for several months.

The FBI took possession of Clinton’s private email server last summer after classified information was found in some of the more than 30,000 emails Clinton turned over to the State Department.

The investigation began after I. Charles McCullough, the intelligence community inspector general, reported to Congress Aug. 11 that Clinton’s private emails included some highly classified information labeled “Top Secret//SI/TK//Noforn.” Information classified at that level is deemed by the government to be very sensitive, requiring strong security protections because its compromise would cause grave damage to U.S. national security.

The politics surrounding the probe prompted FBI Director James Comey to tell reporters last week that the bureau will not be influenced by politics.

“One of the main reasons I have a 10-year term is to make sure that this organization stays outside of politics, and if you know my folks, you know that they don’t give a whit about politics,” Comey said, adding that the FBI has devoted sufficient resources and personnel so that the Clinton email probe can be completed in a timely way.

Those remarks were the first official confirmation of the investigation.

The State Department contacted Clinton’s lawyer, David E. Kendall, seeking additional emails that were not part of the more than 30,000 emails provided to the department earlier, the Washington Times reported on Tuesday.

The private email server was discovered by the legal public interest group Judicial Watch in late 2014 after the State Department informed the group that it had discovered a new tranche of records. Judicial Watch currently has at least 16 lawsuits related to State Department and other government records.

The email server material then became the focus of House investigators looking into Clinton’s handling of the terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi in 2012.

The House investigation of the Benghazi attack was attacked by Clinton this week after Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.), the frontrunner to be the next House speaker, said the Benghazi probe was part of a political effort to diminish Clinton’s presidential prospects.

Clinton seized on the comments in a New Hampshire town hall meeting this week.

Asked if she would have investigated a member of a Republican administration amid charges of improperly using a personal email account and server, Clinton said, “I would never have done that.”

“Look at the situation they chose to exploit to go after me for political reasons, the death of four Americans in Benghazi,” she continued.

In a sign of increasing worries about the probe at the Clinton campaign, the New York Post reported that an unidentified legal aide to Clinton has advised her to hire a criminal defense lawyer.

The number of communications regarded as classified is about 400, according to the latest State Department release of emails. Three of the new emails released last month were marked secret, including emails relating to Iranian nuclear talks.

Security analysts have voiced concerns that foreign hackers may have breached the private email server.

One theory is that Clinton aides who were cleared for access to national security secrets first read classified reports on State Department information system and then “gisted” the material into private emails for Clinton.

Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill told the New York Times that none of the candidate’s aides had mishandled classified information.

“She and her team took the handling of classified information very seriously, and at home and abroad she communicated with others via secure phone, cable, and in meetings in secure settings,” Merrill said.

The State Department has confirmed to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) in a related development that Clinton currently holds a security clearance for Top Secret, Sensitive Compartmented Information, the highest-level security clearance.

The department said Clinton’s clearance was “revalidated” after she left office in 2013 and was done so as part of a standard practice allowing former high-ranking officials to be granted access to secrets.

Critics in Congress have called for Clinton’s clearance to be revoked based on the compromises involved in her use of the private email system.