GOP steps up attacks over Clinton emails
Tech companies who worked on device subpoenaed.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump raised questions on whether he’s backtracking from his pledges to push for mass deportations.
WASHINGTON— Republicans stepped up their attacks on Monday on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and pointed to newly released messages to allege that foreign donors to the Democratic presidential nominee’s family charity got preferential treatment from her department.
Congressional Republicans issued subpoenas to three technology companies that either made or serviced the server located in the basement of Clinton’s New York home. The subpoenas were issued Monday by House Science, Space and Technology Chairman Lamar Smith of Texas with the support of Senate Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.
In a joint statement, Smith and Johnson said the move was necessary after the three companies—Platte River Networks, Datto Inc. and SECNAP Network Security Corp. — declined to voluntarily answer questions to determine whether Clinton’s private server met government standards for record-keeping and security.
The subpoenas were among several developments Monday that showed a new GOP emphasis on Clinton’s emails after the FBI recently closed its yearlong probe into whether she and her aides mishandled sensitive government information that flowed through her server, without recommending criminal charges.
The State Department is now reviewing nearly 15,000 previously undisclosed emails recovered as part of the FBI investigation. Lawyers for the department told U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg on Monday that they anticipate processing and releasing the first batch of these new emails in mid-October, raising the prospect that new messages sent or received by Clinton could become public just before November’s election.
Boasberg is overseeing production of the emails as part of a federal public-records lawsuit filed by the conservative legal advocacy group Judicial Watch. Representing the State Department, Justice Department lawyer Lisa Olson told the judge that officials do not yet know what portion of the emails is work-related, rather than personal.
Clinton, who was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, had claimed that she deleted only personal emails prior to returning more than 55,000 pages of her work-related messages to the State Department last year. The department has publicly released most of those emails, although some have been withheld because they contain information considered sensitive to national security.
The thousands of previously undisclosed Clinton emails obtained by the FBI came from the accounts of other people she communicated with or were recovered through the bureau’s forensic examination of her old server.
Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon reiterated Monday that Clinton provided all the work-related emails she had “in her possession” when the State Department asked for copies in 2014. He said “if the State Department determines any of them to be work-related, then obviously we support those documents being released publicly as well.”