‘ As time went on, a lot of people just forgot about it…’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) The Justice Department has nearly concluded its investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s abuse of a private email server, without producing “tangible results,” according to The Washington Post.
U.S. Attorney John Huber has been looking into the scandal since 2017, as well as possible corruption involving the Clinton Foundation. But the case is largely finished, and Huber doesn’t plan to send an official notice to the Justice Department, officials said.
“We didn’t expect much of it, and neither did he,” one person familiar with the matter told the Post. “And as time went on, a lot of people just forgot about it.”
When Huber was first appointed by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, he was told to give the Justice Department “recommendations” that “include whether any matters not currently under investigation warrants the opening of an investigation, whether any matters currently under investigation require further resources or further investigation, and whether any matters would merit the appointment of a Special Counsel.”
But Huber does not plan to pursue the case further, officials said, despite the fact that an independent State Department investigation found negligence on the part of 38 State Department officials spanning 91 instances in which classified information appeared on Clinton’s unsecured server.
Because Clinton withheld some 30,000 email files and used BleachBit software to wipe the server, ignoring a congressional subpoena to preserve the evidence, the agency’s audit was likely based on outbound transfers of its own servers to Clinton’s now-defunct private address, [email protected].
The report found that some of those implicated had “deliberately transmitted” information via Clinton’s personal server. As of yet, no “culpable” officials have been charged because the State Department concluded there was no “persuasive evidence” of widespread mishandling of classified information.
But Republican lawmakers have vowed to continue pursuing this case even if the Justice and State departments drop it.
“Mishandling classified information should be a bipartisan issue that is managed with equal application of the law without regard to power, party, or privilege,” Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
“The failure to safeguard classified information by exposing it to unclassified systems without proper authority puts national security at risk,” Grassley said.