“Foreign actors” accessed Hillary Clinton’s emails, including one that was classified “secret,” according to a memo produced by two Republican-led House committees and obtained by Fox News.
The memo details the findings of congressional investigators who looked into whether the Department of Justice made politically motivated decisions over the past two years with respect to the Clinton and Trump-Russia investigations.
“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. The private accounts of Clinton staffers were also breached by unnamed foreign actors, according to the memo.
The memo also notes that the “secret” classification, which was applied to at least one of the hacked emails, refers to information that, if disclosed, could “reasonably be expected to cause serious damage to the national security.”
An internal FBI email sent in May 2016 by Peter Strzok, who was removed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe for demonstrating political bias, corroborates the contents of the memo.
“We know foreign actors obtained access” to some Clinton emails, Strzok wrote in the email, obtained by Fox News.
Strzok, who served as a key investigator in the Clinton email probe, also asserts that foreign actors accessed at least one “secret” message “via compromises of the private email accounts” of Clinton staffers.
Strzok’s statement exceeded those of former FBI director James Comey, who said in July 2016 that hostile actors accessed the email accounts of people with whom Clinton regularly conversed on her personal account. Comey made that conclusion public while announcing he would not recommend that charges be brought against Clinton for her handling of classified information as secretary of state.
The House committees chastised Comey for reaching an outcome that was “predetermined” in deciding not to charge Clinton before he had interviewed her and other key witnesses. The memo they produced also questions Comey’s interpretation of the law, which held that because there was no evidence of “intent” on Clinton’s part, she could not be charged.
“Mr. Comey, as the FBI Director, was the chief investigator, not the prosecutor. It was not up to him to determine what a ‘reasonable prosecutor’ would do with the evidence the FBI had collected,” the memo says.
The Department of Justice inspector general is expected to release a report on the FBI’s handling of the Clinton investigation to Congress Thursday afternoon.
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