'Foreign actors' had access to Hillary's emails including one classified 'secret'

Fox News’ Catherine Herridge is reporting that an FBI memo and documents prepared by two House committees indicate that unnamed “foreign actors” had access to some of Hillary Clinton’s emails, including at least one classified as “secret.”

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Fox News obtained the memo prepared by the House Judiciary and Oversight committees, which lays out key interim findings ahead of next week’s hearing with Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz…

“Documents provided to the Committees show foreign actors obtained access to some of Mrs. Clinton’s emails — including at least one email classified ‘Secret,'” the memo says, adding that foreign actors also accessed the private accounts of some Clinton staffers…

Relatedly, Fox News has obtained a May 2016 email from FBI investigator Peter Strzok — who also is criticized in the House memo for his anti-Trump texts with colleague Lisa Page. The email says that “we know foreign actors obtained access” to some Clinton emails, including at least one “secret” message “via compromises of the private email accounts” of Clinton staffers.

You can read the full FBI memo in Herridge’s story. It offers Peter Strzok’s thoughts on a number of issues related to Clinton’s email server. The final one, which appears under the heading “Topics for Further Discussion” is this: “Whether her conduct rises to the legal definition of gross negligence.”  It has been previously reported that Strzok was the individual who revised the draft of Comey’s statement about the Clinton email investigation to remove the phrase “grossly negligent” and replaced it with the legally inert “extremely careless.”

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In the FBI memo, you can already see the genesis of the distinction the FBI would rely on to clear Clinton. Strzok writes that the media has been focused on the question of why Hillary seems to be getting a pass when “Petraeus/Berger/Libby” did not. He writes, “We draw the distinction in noting we have no evidence classified information was ever shared with an unauthorized party, i.e. notwithstanding the server setup, we have not seen classified information shared with a member of the media, an agent of a foreign power, a lover, etc.”

In other words, Hillary may have been hacked but she didn’t intentionally give anything away. Of course, the statute itself didn’t make intent a prerequisite. Herridge reports that the House committee memo once again raises this same issue:

“Officials from both agencies have created a perception they misinterpreted the Espionage Act by stating Secretary Clinton lacked the requisite ‘intent’ for charges to be filed,” the memo says, before pointing to statements by Comey that indicated a belief that intent was required — which the memo says ignored “meaningful aspects” of the law.

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It really does seem that Strzok, an agent who had a personal pro-Hillary bias, was the person who pushed to let her off the hook by focusing on her intent rather than her negligence setting up the server in the first place.

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Ed Morrissey 12:40 PM | December 16, 2024
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