State Department officials have opened “a formal inquiry” into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server located in her New York residence, and are considering whether she and her aides should lose their security clearances, Fox News reports.
Officials are investigating her use of a private server in the basement of her Chapaqua, New York, mansion to determine if she mishandled classified information during her tenure as the nation’s top diplomat, Fox reported in news the outlet said is confirmed by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley.
Former FBI Director James Comey said in a July 2016 press conference that Clinton and her aides were “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.” But he did not recommend prosecution of Clinton or any of her aides, a move that generated widespread criticism.
Officials found that Clinton’s private emails contained dozens of documents labeled Top Secret and “Special Access Program” — the nation’s highest classification — among her emails delivered to the department by her lawyer, David Kendall.
Fox News reports that State Department officials are determining if Clinton and her aides “violated government protocols by using her private server to receive, hold and transmit classified and top-secret government documents.”
Last year OPSEC, a non-profit organization composed of retired Special Forces and intelligence officials asked then-Secretary of State John Kerry to pull Clinton’s security clearance. They never received a reply.
Grassley, the Iowa Republican who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is separately investigating Clinton’s handling of classified material, according to Fox News.
In addition to Clinton, her closest aides — Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills and Jacob Sullivan — were reported to have enabled Clinton by posting documents in the secretary’s emails.
Abedin also had thousands of Hillary’s emails on a laptop owned by her estranged husband, former Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York, which is now in the FBI’s possession. Weiner pled guilty to “sexting” with a teenage girl. Abedin is filing for divorce.
Fox reported it did not know if the formal inquiry began with Kerry or with Trump Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
The State Department declined to address any aspect of their inquiry into the former Secretary and her aides, informing Saagar Enjeti, TheDCNF’s Pentagon and foreign affairs correspondent, “Due to privacy considerations, the Department cannot provide any information regarding any current or former employees’ security clearance or access to classified information.”
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