News that FBI has recovered emails prompts Republican senator to ask for independent review
By Peter Nicholas And Sept. 23, 2015 6:51 p.m. ET
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A new front is opening in the battle over Hillary Clinton’s emails from her time as secretary of state, with at least one senator asking for an independent review of the deleted messages the FBI is now recovering from the private server she used while in office.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is looking into the security surrounding Mrs. Clinton’s email arrangement, has retrieved some portion of the tens of thousands of emails once held on the computer, a person familiar with the matter said.
Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic presidential front-runner, has said she turned over to the State Department all work-related messages and then deleted the data on the server, which included some 30,000 emails that she said were personal in nature. Officials wouldn’t say how far along they are in combing the computer, which Mrs. Clinton turned over to the bureau.
After learning that some of Mrs. Clinton’s emails have been recovered, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) said Wednesday he wants an independent authority, besides the FBI, to examine the emails to see if she deleted any connected to her government work and thus part of the public record.
The third party would be asked to verify whether the material that was deleted was personal, as Mrs. Clinton claims, said Beth Levine, a Grassley spokeswoman.
“Allowing an independent authority to search for records that were requested by Congress, the Inspector General, the press, and the public years ago, and then providing the records to the appropriate requesters, would be a welcome move in transparency,” Mr. Grassley said in a statement.
The watchdog group Cause of Action is suing the State Department and the National Archives seeking to compel them to find out if any additional records exist on Mrs. Clinton’s server that should have been submitted to the government. Mrs. Clinton’s newly-recovered records could become wrapped up in those lawsuits as they move forward—a move the FBI would likely fight. The State Department has said repeatedly it doesn’t comment on ongoing litigation.
“Our lawsuit calls on both of those agencies to ensure that these records are properly recovered, and we intend to continue our efforts until that happens,” said Daniel Epstein, the group’s executive director.
The Clinton campaign declined to comment Wednesday about the Grassley statement or the FBI review. In past interviews, Mrs. Clinton said it was a mistake for her to exclusively use a private email account for State Department business. In an interview with CBS Sunday she said “What I did was allowed. It was fully above board. People in the government certainly knew that I was using a personal email.”
The FBI’s discovery that the emails weren’t permanently deleted, reported earlier by Bloomberg News, will add fuel to a controversy that has dogged Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign from the start. Should a third-party review determine that not all of the deleted messages were personal, it would be a new blow for a campaign that has been trying without success to put the issue behind it.
The Democratic candidate’s approval ratings have fallen after months of headlines focused on her use of a private email server and fewer Americans have come to see her as honest and straightforward. Mrs. Clinton’s weakened standing in the primary election is feeding calls for Vice President Joe Biden to enter the race and provide the party with an alternative, an option he is weighing.
Mrs. Clinton is to testify next month before a House committee looking into the terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya in 2012 that killed four Americans. What is shaping up to be a high-stakes appearance already would be far more combative if Republicans were to learn of deleted, work-related emails.
Republicans have long demanded that Mrs. Clinton turn over the server to a neutral party to ensure the government’s record of the Benghazi attacks is complete. She had initially refused and said through her attorney the computer contained nothing of value because it no longer held any records from her time in office.
After a determination that classified information was found on Mrs. Clinton’s email account, she turned her server over to the FBI as part of a counterintelligence investigation. The FBI took possession of the computer last month, after it had previously been managed by a Colorado-based IT firm, Platte River Networks.
Justice Department officials have said she isn’t the target of the probe, and Mrs. Clinton has insisted she never sent anything marked classified at the time.
One of Mrs. Clinton’s IT staffers, Bryan Pagliano, asserted his constitutional right against self-incrimination and refused to answer questions about the setup of the server. Congressional investigators are weighing whether to offer him immunity.
The FBI has technical abilities to retrieve deleted emails. Such data can be recovered if additional steps aren’t taken to overwrite the storage space on the server.
The issue of what is on the server—and who if anyone besides the FBI will be allowed to see that information—is already a point of contention in one of the Freedom of Information Act lawsuits filed over her emails. Earlier this week, the FBI rebuffed a request to explain what it had found in examining Mrs. Clinton’s server.
A federal judge overseeing one case had asked the State Department to inquire of the FBI what it had found. The FBI responded to the court-ordered request from State that it couldn’t confirm the existence of any investigation, or provide any additional information.
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