Trump suggests Clinton emails linked to Iranian scientist’s death
NEW YORK — Republican Donald Trump is suggesting that rival Hillary Clinton’s emails may be responsible for the death of an Iranian nuclear scientist who was executed for spying for the United States.
Hours after an unusually disciplined speech on his economic plan for the country, Trump, using the “people are saying” sentence structure he often favours to make accusations, tweeted Monday night:
“Many people are saying that the Iranians killed the scientist who helped the U.S. because of Hillary Clinton’s hacked emails.”
Clinton’s campaign said he’s making up those “people.”
Trump didn’t say which people he meant. The FBI has said there is no evidence that Clinton’s emails were hacked due to her use of a private account and server during her tenure as secretary of state.
Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill responded on Twitter: “Many people are saying ‘I made this up.’ ”
Merrill added that after Trump’s morning speaking to the Detroit Economic Club and sticking closely to his script, “the muzzle was bound to come off.”
Amiri, an Iranian scientist, defected to the U.S. at the height of Western efforts to thwart Iran’s nuclear program. When he returned in 2010, he was given a hero’s welcome and greeted with flowers by government leaders. Then he mysteriously disappeared. Amiri’s case indirectly found its way into the spotlight last year with the release of State Department emails sent and received by Clinton.
One email forwarded to Clinton by senior adviser Jake Sullivan on July 5, 2010 — 10 days before Amiri returned to Tehran — appears to reference the scientist. “We have a diplomatic, ‘psychological’ issue, not a legal one. Our friend has to be given a way out,” the email by Richard Morningstar, a former State Department special envoy for Eurasian energy, read. “Our person won’t be able to do anything anyway. If he has to leave, so be it.”
Clinton’s decision to store her emails on a private server in her New York home sparked an FBI investigation and has become a major issue in the presidential campaign.