The latest FBI dump of documents from the investigation into Clinton’s email follies includes a summary of one agent’s talks with Undersecretary Patrick Kennedy — who, the agent said, “pressured” him to “change the classified email to unclassified.”
Kennedy “asked his assistance in altering the email’s classification in exchange for a ‘quid pro quo,’ ” the summary says. “In exchange for marking the email unclassified, State would reciprocate by allowing the FBI to place more agents in countries where they were presently forbidden.”
That’s a promise to help alter US policy in order to make it seem like Clinton hadn’t casually endangered national security. That the FBI didn’t take the deal doesn’t make the potential trade any less odious.
And State is still covering: Its official comments call the allegations “inaccurate” and claim Kennedy was merely trying to “understand” the FBI’s decision. Who offers to change federal policy in order to “understand” something?
Plus, in a later interview with the FBI, Kennedy was asked if any of certain Clinton emails was classified — and answered, “We’ll see” while making eye contact with the agent he’d discussed the deal with.
Kennedy is hardly the only State official to try covering for Clinton. The whole department did its best to minimize the scandal — by repeatedly claiming it just couldn’t release most of Clinton’s emails until after Election Day, until court rulings forced it to cough them up.
The FBI also released the summary of an interview that revealed a cabal at State that oversaw the email release — a “powerful group of very high-ranking STATE officials that some referred to as ‘The 7th Floor Group’ or as ‘The Shadow Government.’ This group met every Wednesday afternoon to discuss . . . everything CLINTON-related to FOIA/Congressional inquiries.”
Imagine officials high in the George W. Bush administration calling themelves “the Shadow Government” as they oversaw a supposedly nonpartisan release of documents that could sink the White House hopes of its former boss.
Heck, State on its own somehow never officially noticed Clinton’s missing emails — regularly reporting “no records that comply” to subpoenas and Freedom of Information requests. Only the hacking of Clintonite Sidney Blumenthal’s emails, two years after she left office, began to expose the truth.
The FBI has flagged the “quid pro quo” exchange for further investigation. Don’t expect that probe to go far if the “shadow government” becomes the real thing after Nov. 8.