FBI vs. State Department Over Hillary Clinton’s Secrets
The FBI and the State Department are squabbling over whether Clinton’s personal lawyers had the right security clearances to personally store her emails.
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In July, FBI Director James Comey testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform that Clinton’s attorneys didn’t have the security clearances they needed. The FBI elaborated in a statement this week to The Daily Beast, saying “most of the attorneys representing former Secretary of State Clinton in this matter did not have the appropriate security clearances to review special access program material,” which is highly secret information that is restricted only to a few people based on their need to know.
...The bureau didn’t specify which lawyers didn’t have the right clearances, but Clinton has been represented by at least two lawyers in matters related to her email, including her longtime personal attorney, David Kendall, of Williams & Connolly, and his colleague, Katherine Turner.
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The question was pressing enough that a State Department legal adviser sent several emails marked “URGENT” to the security officers who had been in charge of vetting Clinton’s attorneys’ offices and setting up the safe.
“Do any of the attorneys have TS [top secret] clearances?” the adviser, Sarah Prosser, wrote, apparently not knowing the answer. The replies from her colleagues are heavily redacted, but the exchanges make clear that State’s attorneys tried to sort out the issue at a critical time.
On the same day Prosser sent the message, the FBI took possession of the thumb drive from Clinton’s lawyers. They would no longer be allowed to keep the emails in their office.
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The decision to give the attorneys a safe was approved by the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Bureau, “taking into account all relevant factors including security clearances and access controls,” Trudeau said. State also provided “instructions for how to secure the material (up to the secret level of classification),” the second-highest of the three basic classification levels the government uses.
“Through a physical security expert, we confirmed that they were taking those measures,” Trudeau continued. “The Department also informed counsel that additional steps would be required if the Department determined the material contained more highly classified information.”
That ultimately proved unnecessary because the FBI came in August and took the thumb drive. At the time, investigators also seized Clinton’s private server. In going through those records, investigators determined that Clinton’s lawyers hadn’t actually read all her emails when they tried to sort out which ones were work-related—the ones that ended up on the thumb drive—and which ones were personal. The lawyers deleted those.
Last week, the FBI revealed that
investigators have found another 15,000 emails that Clinton’s attorneys never turned over. ...