The Trump administration announced the launch of a mass investigation into the email correspondence of several current and former senior and low-level State Department officials who communicated with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email account, The Washington Post said, citing sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
According to the media report, State Department investigators began contacting former officials some 18 months ago, after Trump’s election, dropping the probe before reanimating it in August.
At least 130 officials were contacted in recent weeks by an investigation state department team, WaPo said, adding that those targeted were notified that emails they sent years ago have now been retroactively classified and constitute potential security violations.
WaPo reported that the unnamed sources claim that there is no political motive in the probe of retroactively-classified emails being conducted by what the paper describes as career bureaucrats who do not know the names of the subjects being investigated.
"This has nothing to do with who is in the White House [...] This is about the time it took to go through millions of emails, which is about 3 1/2 years”, an unnamed senior State Department official avowed to the newspaper.
"The process is set up in a manner to completely avoid any appearance of political bias”, asserted a second unnamed senior State Department official, cited by The Washington Post.
According to the media report, targeted officials "do not appear to be in jeopardy of criminal prosecution", as the FBI investigation of the Clinton email case was closed prior to the 2016 presidential election. Many target officials fear, according to the anonymous State Department officials, that the results of the probe could end their ability to vetted for security clearance.
The FBI investigated Clinton, a former Democratic candidate who ran against Trump, and concluded that no criminal charges would be filed. The agency briefly reopened the investigation prior to the 2016 US presidential election after newly-discovered emails were thought by some to have been pertinent to the case, but quickly closed the second probe following Clinton's loss to Trump in November 2016.
