Donald Trump’s administration is initiating an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, The Washington Post reported Saturday, breathing new life into a pet issueused by the president to rail against his opponent during the 2016 elections.
The question of whether Clinton improperly used a private email account and server while secretary of state led to Trump’s repeat assertion that she deserved to be put imprison and frequent chants of “lock her up” at his political rallies.
Following an FBI investigation into the matter, former director James Comey did not recommend charges against Clinton but did describe her conduct as “extremely careless.”
In recent weeks, up to 130 officials have been contacted by State Department investigators concerning emails they sent years ago which have been retroactively
classified, nearly all of which were sent to or eventually made their way into Clinton’s unsecure email account, the Post reported. The paper, which cited current and former officials, said State Department investigators began contacting employees approximately 1.5 years ago, before the effort trailed off, only to be revived again in August. “This has nothing to do with who is in the White House,” one senior State Department official told the Post, speaking on condition of anonymity. “This is about the time it took to go through millions of emails, which is about 3.5 years.”
Revelation of the renewed effort comes the same week that Democrats in Congress launched an impeachment investigation into Trump over accusations he tried to arm-twist the Ukrainian president into providing dirt on one of his main 2020 election rivals, Joe Biden.
State Department officials deny the renewed email effort has any political motivation.