FBI Quietly Releases 300 Pages Of Hillary Clinton Investigation Records
DailyCaller: The FBI quietly released nearly 300 pages of records from its investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server on Sunday night.
This is the fifth release of Clinton investigation records from the FBI. The documents deal with the handling of computer hardware collected from Clinton’s lawyers for the investigation and also contain emails from FBI officials discussing the classification of Clinton’s emails.
The FBI has previously released notes from interviews it conducted during its investigation of Clinton’s handling of classified information. FBI director James Comey declined to recommend that Clinton be charged in the case, and Attorney General Loretta Lynch accepted that advice.
The emails included in the documents are from the months prior to the formal opening of the Clinton email probe, which occurred on July 10, 2015. The exchanges show disagreements between the FBI and State Department over whether some of Clinton’s personal emails should be classified.
In one April 27, 2015 email, an FBI official wrote to other officials that they were “about to get drug into an issue on classification” of Clinton’s emails. The official, whose name is redacted, said that the State Department was “forum shopping,” or seeking a favorable opinion on the classification issue by asking different officials to rate emails as unclassified.
From FBI document release
Other email traffic sheds light on a controversy involving State Department under secretary for management Patrick Kennedy and a request he made in 2015 that the FBI reduce its classification of a Clinton email related to the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks in Benghazi.
Clinton investigation notes released by the FBI in October showed that an FBI official said during an interview as part of the email probe that Kennedy asked him and others at the FBI to relax classifications on some emails.
The new FBI release contains a May 21, 2015 email in which Michael Steinbach, the FBI’s assistant director of the counterterrorism division, detailed a conversation he had with Kennedy about the classification issue.
Steinbach said that the FBI had determined that one of Clinton’s emails should be classified using b(1) and b(7) redactions, used to protect information in the interest of national defense and to prevent the disclosure of a confidential source, respectively. Kennedy asked Steinbach to classify the email using only the b(1) category.
An email sent two days earlier from a separate FBI official provided more information about the dispute.
The official, whose name is redacted, wrote that the Clinton email was redacted and classified on the rationale that it contained information that would cause “interference with foreign relations.”
The FBI official wrote that the email could disclose sources and investigative methods used by the bureau.
“While the email does not name the particular official, this might be deduced and, given the threat of violence in the region, any surmise could be fatal for whoever cooperated with us,” the official wrote.
“State will say no one will know if it is redacted, but that is not how classification works,” they added.
The official wrote that he informed Kennedy of that rationale and that Kennedy said he would be in contact with Steinbach.
The FBI release also includes an email from the attorney of Bryan Pagliano, the Hillary Clinton State Department aide who set up and managed her secret email server. In the email, Mark MacDougall, Pagliano’s lawyer, informed the FBI that Pagliano would decline the bureau’s request for an investigation. Pagliano would eventually meet with the FBI in December, but only after receiving limited immunity from the Department of Justice.
****The documents released included a series of letters from the FBI to what seem to be internet service providers and/or major telecommunications companies, asking them to preserve any documents related to this investigation.
Even more interesting about those letters, was the specific request to keep this query secret, and not reveal it to the subjects being investigated, “as the FBI’s investigation may be jeopardized by this type of disclosure.”
The letters were all signed by Charles Kable, the Section Chief of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division.
Also included, FBI communications with the State Department, asking that agency to preserve emails that were sent to clintonemail.com.
The names of 19 individuals were listed in the FBI letter to the State Department Inspector General – all those names were redacted in this FBI release.
The same letter was also sent by the FBI to Secretary of State John Kerry.
The newly released records indicate the FBI went so far as to serve the letter addressed to the State Department Inspector General and the Secretary of State, though it seemed more of a formality for Kerry.
“The preservation letter was served at U.S. Department of State’s Visitor Center,” read one of the released FBI documents.
Also included in the documents are email exchanges between the FBI and State Department over how to treat some of Clinton’s emails that were being released before the election.
“Attached is an email forwarded to us by State Dept. for coordination,” reads one email that had the subject line of “State Department Emails – FOIA Coordination.”
“The email concerns Benghazi. It is from former Sec. Clinton’s emails,” the note adds. The name of the sender and the recipient of that email were redacted.
That was part of a series of email exchanges between the FBI and State Department on how to deal with the release of certain Clinton emails under the Freedom of Information Act.
“I’ve called the State’s Legal Advisor’s Office a number of times and haven’t connected,” read one of the many emails released.
“Just received a call from State,” read another. “They want to argue about the b1 portion,” referring to one of the classifications.
The emails discussing what to do about Clinton’s own emails were also subject to similar classification issues, as those notices dot the margins of the FBI’s release.
The FBI release also includes an email from the lawyer for Brian Pagliano, the former aide who helped Hillary Clinton set up and maintain her private email server – it notified officials in August of 2015 that he would not be cooperating with the investigation.
The FBI documents also detail the search for information from Platte River Networks, the high tech company that dealt with the Clinton server.
On August 12, 2015, the FBI took possession of a Dell Poweredge Server from that company – the box “Collected/Seized” was checked.
The FBI documents show the breadth of the investigation into the Clinton email matter growing dramatically – whereas the FBI at first was asking for email records from 19 different names, by August 18, 2015, that had grown to 422 in a “Request for Preservation of Records.”
The recipient of that letter was unclear; the address and name was redacted by the FBI.
Another letter from August 18, 2015 asked for records to be preserved for over 900 people – again, the recipient of that letter is unknown, redacted by the FBI.
As with other requests, the FBI asks that the recipient not reveal the FBI investigation.
There are also other intriguing documents, like this one – which hint at some kind of tip related to the Clinton investigation.
In this release, which was made on Sunday night without any publicity, the FBI did not release any emails to or from Hillary Clinton.
