Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman, Ron Johnson (R-WI), sent a letter to the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration Thursday to seek sought “all email communications” between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama.
The letter pertains to 2016 communications between former FBI Agent Peter Strzok to FBI Director James Comey’s Chief of Staff, James Rybicki, where they discussed the existence of the Clinton-Obama messages that were relevant to the issues raised by Hillary’s private server.
Sen. Johnson noted in his letter that on June 28, 2016, a week before Comey’s public statement declaring that “no reasonable prosecutor” would charge Clinton, Strzok wrote, “Jim – I have the POTUS – HRC emails [Director Comey] requested at end of briefing yesterday. I hesitate to leave them, please let me know a convenient time to drop them off.”
“I write to request email communications between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama,” Johnson wrote and set a deadline of Nov. 14, 2019. “In January 2018, I requested the Department of Justice (DOJ) produce emails Secretary Clinton sent to President Obama while she was located in the ‘territory of a sophisticated adversary.'”
He added: “Given that DOJ acknowledged that they ‘are not in a position’ to produce emails to the committee that contain ‘equities of other executive branch entities,’ I ask that, pursuant to the Presidential Records Act, you please provide all email communications between Secretary Clinton and President Obama.”
Sen. Johnson attached a link his letter on Twitter and wrote, “Sent a request to @USNatArchives for Clinton-Obama emails based on this text we found from Peter Strzok: “I have the POTUS – HRC emails requested at end of briefing yesterday. I hesitate to leave them, please let me know a convenient time to drop them off.” (Continued Below)
Earlier this month, a State Department report into Clinton’s use of a private email server for government business found dozens of people at fault and hundreds of security violations.
A May 2016 email from Strzok, obtained by Fox News last year, said “we know foreign actors obtained access” to some Clinton emails, including at least one “secret” message “via compromises of the private email accounts” of Clinton staffers. However, last year, the DOJ watchdog slammed Comey for speculating publicly that Clinton’s emails had been hacked by foreign actors, as reported by Fox News.
Interviews with intelligence community officials released this past August indicated that senior FBI leaders “seemed indifferent to evidence of a possible intrusion by a foreign adversary” into Clinton’s non-government email server, and that State Department officials allegedly sought to “downgrade classified material found on the server,” according to Senate investigators probing the matter, per Fox News. (Continued Below)
The information was contained in a letter and interview transcripts sent by the majority staff on Johnson’s Homeland Security Committee to senior Senate Republicans including Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA). The letter also noted that “neither the committees nor the FBI were able to confirm whether an intrusion into the server occurred.”
(Related: Herridge Unveils ‘Media Leak’ Texts Between Strzok & Page That Lawmakers Are Demanding Answers To)
Sen. Ron Johnson’s official tweet:
Sent a request to @USNatArchives for Clinton-Obama emails based on this text we found from Peter Strzok: “I have the POTUS – HRC emails requested at end of briefing yesterday. I hesitate to leave them, please let me know a convenient time to drop them off."https://t.co/USVIIiYvGH
— Senator Ron Johnson (@SenRonJohnson) November 1, 2019
Letter Courtesy of Sen. Ron Johnson’s Twitter.
