Pressure Mounts on Clinton as She Lashes Out at Intelligence Community Over Email Probe

By News Max

Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign Wednesday accused the intelligence community’s top oversight official of conspiring with Republicans in the Senate to leak sensitive information about her personal e-mail server. That's a risky move, considering that it has produced no hard evidence of a conspiracy and the accused parties are denying it.
The public dispute between the former Secretary of State and the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community reached new heights following Tuesday’s report by Fox News on a letter sent by inspector general I. Charles McCullough to Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker. In the letter, McCullough stated that he had received sworn declarations from two separate intelligence agencies that cover “several dozen e- mails” on Clinton's private server. These e-mails were determined by these agencies to contain information that should have been treated as secret, top secret, and “SAP,” an abbreviation that refers to “special access programs,” which are among the most sensitive in the government.
Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon told me in an interview Wednesday that the campaign believes that McCullough and the Republican senators worked behind the scenes to orchestrate a series of events that would lead to the disclosure of those declarations.
“It is suspect from the beginning that the intelligence community inspector general is continuing to reveal materials and surface allegations while the Justice Department review is going on,” Fallon said. “It’s completely fair to suspect that the intelligence community inspector general is not operating in good faith.” He provided no hard evidence to support these assumptions, however.
Now that the FBI is investigating the handling of information found on Clinton’s server, Fallon said, the intelligence community inspector general should stay out of it and let the Justice Department do its work. But McCullough's letter shows he intends to keep trying to influence the outcome.
According to the Clinton campaign, the inspector general and the Republican senators have separate agendas in wanting to influence the public debate over whether or not Clinton’s e-mail server contained highly classified information. The Republicans simply want to hurt Clinton’s political aspirations, Fallon said. But the inspector general’s move, Fallon said, is part of a campaign to influence a bureaucratic battle between the intelligence community and the State Department.
The State Department and intelligence agencies disagreed last August over whether two e-mails found on Clinton’s server should have been treated as “top secret.” The State Department said the information that the e-mails contained was not classified when the messages were sent, but the intelligence agencies said the information was always classified and should have been treated as such. The State Department asked James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, to adjudicate that dispute.
In November, a Politico report stated that intelligence officials reviewing those two e-mails were leaning toward the State Department’s opinion. Following that report, Burr and Corker wrote to McCullough to ask for an update and McCullough responded. Fallon alleges that the timing of the letters is evidence enough of a conspiracy to leak the information.
“It looks like Clapper’s office will undercut McCullough,” Fallon said. “McCullough is trying to litigate this with Clapper and have his own view of these two e-mails upheld.”