Clinton FBI Email Investigation: What Does The Bureau’s Latest Data Dump Reveal?

Talk of the Clinton FBI email investigation was put on the back burner after Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in the 2016 election, as well as in light of the accusations by U.S. intelligence of Russia interfering with the election by hacking. However, hundreds of pages worth of the Clinton FBI email probe were dumped on Sunday.

Here we will take a look at what the newly publicized documents have revealed thus far.

Daily Caller reports that the Clinton FBI email dump centers around a dispute between the State Department and the FBI regarding the classification of specific Clinton emails.

“The exchanges show disagreements between the FBI and State Department over whether some of Clinton’s personal emails should be classified.”

This is the fifth time a Clinton FBI email dump has occurred, and these emails contain messages from before July 10, 2015, which was the day the FBI announced their official opening of an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.

An unnamed FBI agent wrote an email in April of 2015 in which it is stated that he/she and his/her FBI kin were “about to get drug (sic) into an issue on classification,” regarding the Clinton emails. The agent goes on to say that the State Department was “shopping” for advantageous judgments vis-à-vis the rank of classification for some emails.

One Clinton email, in particular, was of special interest to State Department official Patrick Kennedy. In 2015, he submitted a request to the FBI in which he asked the agency to consider weakening the classification of a specific Clinton email having to do with the situation in Benghazi.

According to reports, a separate Clinton FBI email dump, which happened in October 2016, indicated that while being prodded by the FBI in relation to the Clinton email investigation, Kennedy petitioned the bureau to lessen the rank of classification for some of the Clinton email messages.

Why would someone from the State Department ask this of the FBI if there had never been mishandling of privileged information?

Included in the most recent Clinton FBI email dump is an email written by FBI counterterrorism specialist Michael Steinbach. In it, Steinbach summarizes a time in which he and Kennedy spoke about Clinton email classifications.

According to Steinbach, the email in question needed to be marked with two different classifications, b(1) and b(7). b(1) has to do with maintaining optimal national security and b(7) relates to inhibition of the unveiling of undercover operatives. Patrick wanted the FBI to nix the b(7) ranking from the email.

A couple of days before Steinbach’s email was written, a different FBI agent who has remained anonymous expanded on the Kennedy situation.

“The [anonymous] FBI official wrote that the email could disclose sources and investigative methods used by the bureau.”

“‘While the email does not name the particular official, this might be deduced and, given the threat of violence in the region, any surmise could be fatal for whoever cooperated with us,’ the official wrote.”

The agent who wrote this claimed to have previously explained these points to Kennedy, who in turn said he’d take it up with Steinbach.

In addition to the Clinton FBI email classification shenanigans, Mark MacDougall, the lawyer of former State Department assistant Bryan Pagliano, who was directly involved in the activities surrounding Clinton’s private email server, wrote an email to the Feds stating that his client would not cooperate with them in the Clinton FBI email investigation. Despite this, however, Pagliano did ultimately find himself face-to-face with the FBI not long ago, but he was given a certain level of immunity by the Department of Justice beforehand.

In response to this latest Clinton FBI email dump, Republican lawmakers are announcing their intent to hold Bryan Pagliano, Patrick Kennedy and possibly a few FBI agents responsible for their mischievous actions regarding national security, the Washington Examiner reports.

House Republican Jason Chaffetz of Utah told the press on Monday that the whole of the Clinton FBI email investigation, “was potentially one of the largest breaches of security in the history of the State Department. It cannot and should never be repeated again.”

This Clinton FBI email dump may well reveal more corruption and controversy in the coming days. Should Americans be concerned with these revelations, or is this all old news? Let us know what you think in the comment section below.

[Featured Image by Evan Vucci/AP Images]