The case of Hillary Clinton’s private email server and her handling of classified information apparently was resolved when FBI Director James Comey announced he would not refer charges to the Justice Department even though he said Clinton was “extremely careless.”
The announcement came shortly after Bill Clinton met privately with Attorney General Loretta Lynch on her airplane.
But now that entire investigation is in doubt with the release of information in the latest WikiLeaks document dump indicating the White House and the Clinton campaign consulted on how best to handle the scandal.
The Trump campaign seized on the new information.
“Today’s report that Clinton’s campaign was in communication with the Obama Department of Justice on the email investigation shows a level of collusion which calls into question the entire investigation into her private server,” said senior communications adviser Jason Miller.
“The Department of Justice must release all communications with the Clinton campaign and her allies as soon as possible in order to definitively prove their investigation was completely above board.”
According to the Daily Caller, after the New York Times reported that Clinton had used a private, unsecure email setup for official government information, the State Department “provided a detailed readout of official email traffic it was about to release in response to Freedom of Information Act requests to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.”
“All – DOS is soon releasing another round of documents and email traffic (not hers) in response to Judicial Watch’s FOIA request on DOS’s process for reviewing WJC’s speaking engagements,” said an email on March 17, 2015.
It was from Heather Samuelson, who has been a Clinton aide for years and was White House liaison during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.
Included in the email were Maura Pally and Craig Minassian of the Clinton Foundation; Philippe Reines, a longtime Clinton adviser; press secretary Nick Merrill; communications director Jennifer Palmieri; Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s chief of staff at the State Department; and Tina Flournoy, Bill Clinton’s ex-chief of staff.
The email continues, “It’s 116 pages with approx. 50 sponsor/subsponsor requests. No objections by DOS in this batch, but some lengthy internal discussions among DOS officials that I highlighted below.”
The Daily Caller said it’s still unclear how Samuelson got the information since she had departed from the State Department earlier, or what was meant by “No objections by DOS.”
“The email also includes several items flagged by department officials which may have been of interest to the Clinton campaign. This includes an invitation [for] former President Clinton to speak at a climate change conference in Turkey, for which he would have been compensated by the Turkish government, and another speaking engagement paid for by the Canadian government. The former president declined the former invitation, but accepted the latter,” the report said.
Samuelson added, “Jen – happy to give you more background on prior releases since it’s your first go around.”
The Daily Caller reported yesterday there was a coordinated effort between the White House and the Clinton campaign on “talking points” about the email account.
That effort was spearheaded by Palmieri, who worked as communications director in the Obama White House before taking a job for the Hillary Clinton campaign.
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It was in her White House position that early in 2015 she coordinated with Clinton’s team in early 2015 “to craft talking points” about the email scandal, the Daily Caller said.
“The email exchange, which was hacked from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s Gmail account … is the first to show that someone from the Obama White House coordinated with Clintonworld about the fledgling scandal,” the report said.
“Philippe and Nick – didn’t Condi also use a non-government account?” Palmieri wrote in a March 2, 2015, email to longtime Clinton adviser Philippe Reines and her press secretary, Nick Merrill.
“If so, think Nick has standing to go back to push NYT to make that clear and to push them to use all of Nick’s quote. It is not correct to say that Nick did not provide a reason for why she did not have a government account, his quote states the reason.”
The DC explained, “But despite Palmieri’s inquiry, Rice never did use email while at the State Department.”
Earlier revelations from hacked emails show that Palmieri and Jen Psaki, then the State Department spokeswoman, talked about ways to make sure Secretary of State John Kerry wasn’t asked about Clinton’s email scandal.
