FBI releases interview reports from Clinton’s email probe

The FBI released 189 pages of interview summaries from its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email system Friday, as Republicans escalated their criticism of the agency for failing to pursue charge against the former secretary of state and her staff.

The documents show that a Clinton aide who maintained the email server while she was in office told the FBI that someone raised concern with him over whether the system created “a federal records retention issue”. The aide, Bryan Pagliano, said the person, whose name was redacted in the FBI documents, asked him in late 2009 or early 2010 to alert top Clinton staff about the matter.

The summaries of interviews with former State Department officials and computer technicians were posted on a Federal Bureau of Investigation website hours after Republicans disclosed that the agency had given immunity — which Democrats said was limited — to Cheryl Mills, who was Clinton’s chief of staff, and two other former State Department aides.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, said “the FBI was handing out immunity agreements like candy” and that he has “lost confidence” in its investigation. While Clinton has said her use of a private email for work-related business was a mistake, the issue is likely to come up Monday in the first debate between Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, and Republican nominee Donald Trump.

Instead of commenting on the latest Republican criticism, the FBI released the cache of interview summaries from its inquiry, although with many passages heavily redacted. In July, FBI Director James Comey said Clinton and her aides were “extremely careless” in handling sensitive government information on her private email server but that prosecution wasn’t warranted.

A spokesman for Clinton’s campaign, Brian Fallon, said in a statement that the interviews "further demonstrate why the Justice Department believed there was no basis to move forward with this case."

According to the FBI interview reports, Pagliano relayed the concerns about public document preservation to Mills. In response, Mills told him that former Secretary of State Colin Powell also used private email, Pagliano told the FBI.

In a separate conversation, someone also told Pagliano, "he wouldn’t be surprised if classified information was being transmitted" over Clinton’s private server, according to the FBI reports. It’s unclear whether that person was the same one who raised the document retention issue. The report doesn’t say how Pagliano responded to that comment.

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A Clinton aide who maintained the email server while she was in office told the FBI that someone raised concern with him over whether the system created ‘a federal records retention issue’