State Department intensifies email probe of Clinton’s former aides
WASHINGTON» The Trump administration is investigating the email records of dozens of current and former senior State Department officials who sent messages to then-secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email, reviving a politically toxic matter that overshadowed the 2016 election, current and former officials said.
As many as 130 officials have been contacted in recent weeks by State Department investigators — a list that includes senior officials who reported directly to Clinton, as well as others in lower-level jobs whose emails were at some point relayed to her inbox, said current and former State Department officials. Those targeted were notified that emails they sent years ago have been retroactively classified and now constitute potential security violations, according to letters reviewed by The Washington Post.
State Department investigators began contacting the former officials about 18 months ago, after President Donald Trump’s election, and then seemed to drop the effort before picking it up in August, officials said.
Senior State Department officials said they are following standard protocol in an investigation that began during the latter days of the Obama administration and is nearing completion.
“This has nothing to do with who is in the White House,” said a senior State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about an ongoing probe. “This is about the time it took to go through millions of emails, which is about 3½ years.”
State Department officials vigorously denied there was any political motivation behind their actions, and said that the reviews of retroactively classified emails were conducted by career bureaucrats who did not know the names of the subjects being investigated.
“The process is set up in a manner to completely avoid any appearance of political bias,” said a second senior State Department official, who was speaking on condition of anonymity to describe the mechanics of an internal probe.
Clinton’s use of a private email server during her term as secretary triggered multiple investigations by the State Department, the FBI and Congress. The bureau did not accuse her of breaking the law, but she blamed the FBI’S unusual public handling of the matter as a major factor in her loss in the 2016 election.
“I’d like to think that this is just routine, but something strange is going on,” said Jeffrey Feltman, a former assistant secretary for Near East Affairs. In early 2018, Feltman received a letter informing him that a half dozen of his messages included classified information. Then, a few weeks ago, he was found culpable for more than 50 emails that contained classified information.
“A couple of the emails cited by State as problems were sent after my May 2012 retirement, when I was already working for the United Nations,” he said.
former senior U.S. official familiar with the email investigation described it as a way for Republicans “to keep the Clinton email issue alive.” The former official said the probe was “a way to tarnish a whole bunch of Democratic foreign policy people” and discourage if not prevent them from returning to government service.
The probe is being carried out by investigators from the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security. Republican lawmakers, led by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-iowa, have been pressing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to complete the review of classified information sent to Clinton’s private emails and report back to Congress.
State Department officials said they were bound by law to adjudicate any violations.
Former Obama administration officials, however, described the probe as a remarkably aggressive crackdown by an administration with its own troubled record of handling classified material. Trump has improperly disclosed classified information to foreign officials and used phones that national security officials warned were vulnerable to foreign surveillance, according to current and former officials.