FBI Quietly Releases 300 Documents Pertaining To Hillary Clinton Investigation

Submitted by Joseph Jankowski via PlanetFreeWill.com,

While most Americans were likely watching the 74th Annual Golden Globes Awards and NFL football, the FBI quietly released another several hundred pages of documents from its investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server on Sunday night.

FBI quietly releases new Hillary Clinton investigation documents (part 5) [as yet, no announcement] https://t.co/lmyWF5rA8H

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) January 9, 2017

The documents deal with the handling of computer hardware collected from Clinton’s lawyers for the investigation and also contains emails from FBI officials discussing the classification of Clinton’s emails.

This is the fifth dump of Clinton investigation records which can be found at the FBI’s Vault website where the agency provides information about high-profile Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) releases.

Chuck Ross of the Daily Caller reports:

The emails included in the documents are from the months prior to the formal opening of the Clinton email probe, which occurred on July 10, 2015. The exchanges show disagreements between the FBI and State Department over whether some of Clinton’s personal emails should be classified.

In one April 27, 2015 email, an FBI official wrote to other officials that they were “about to get drug into an issue on classification” of Clinton’s emails. The official, whose name is redacted, said that the State Department was “forum shopping,” or seeking a favorable opinion on the classification issue by asking different officials to rate emails as unclassified.

From FBI document release

Other email traffic sheds light on a controversy involving State Department under secretary for management Patrick Kennedy and a request he made in 2015 that the FBI reduce its classification of a Clinton email related to the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks in Benghazi.

Clinton investigation notes released by the FBI in October showed that an FBI official said during an interview as part of the email probe that Kennedy asked him and others at the FBI to relax classifications on some emails.

The under the radar release also contains a May 21, 2015 email in which the FBI’s assistant director of the counterterrorism division, Michael Steinbach, details a conversation with Patrick Kennedy on classification.

In the email, Steinbach recommended that one of Clinton’s emails be classified using b(1) and b(7) redactions, a technique used to protect information in the interest of national defense. Kennedy was asking Steinbach to allow just b(1) redactions.

An unnamed official said that the email in dispute by Kennedy and Steinbach could disclose sources and investigative methods used by the bureau, according to the released documents.

The official also added that the disputed email was redacted and classified on the rationale that it contained information that would cause “interference with foreign relations.”

“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.

“State will say no one will know if it is redacted, but that is not how classification works,” they added.

More information will be coming out about this document dump as the week progresses, but don’t expect the MSM to harp on it at all. Remember the Russians are coming…

The FBI has not yet announced the release of the documents.

Read the latest Clinton files below: