One of the email chains from the latest WikiLeaks document dump indicates that the Hillary Clinton campaign had a contact at the Obama Department of Justice that fed them information about one of her court cases. The revelation now has Republicans wondering if the Clinton camp colluded with the DOJ on the entire email investigation.
The email chain in question reveals that the Clinton camp got a heads-up in May of 2015 about one of the lawsuits seeking the production of Clinton’s emails while at the State Department.
On May 18, 2015, Clinton press secretary Brian Fallon received an email from an unnamed DOJ official saying, “Hey Brian, this was filed tonight.” Fourteen minutes later Fallon, a former spokesman for the DOJ, emailed Clinton confidante Cheryl Mills to pass along a tip: “DOJ just filed a briefing saying the gov’t proposes releasing HRC’s cache of work-related emails in January 2016,” he wrote.
The actual date was January 15 — two weeks before the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. Government lawyers had disclosed the date in court documents in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by VICE News.
Mills responded, “Get out!???”
The next day, May 19, Fallon emailed to say, “DOJ folks inform me there is a status hearing in this case this morning, so we could have a window into the judge’s thinking about this proposed production schedule as quickly as today.”
Wow. Unbelievable. https://t.co/RcBPCcmwnD
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 11, 2016
Via Fox News:
Information about a status hearing likely would have been public anyway – and it’s unclear whether there was any further contact between the DOJ and Clinton campaign.
But the email stoked GOP complaints that they had improper discussions about the former secretary of state’s emails, which the department investigated for months. Fallon happens to be a former spokesman with the Justice Department.
“Today’s report that Clinton’s campaign was in communication with the Obama Department of Justice on the email investigation shows a level of collusion which calls into question the entire investigation into her private server,” Donald Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller said in a statement.
The Republican National Committee also invoked the controversial tarmac meeting Attorney General Loretta Lynch had with Bill Clinton, before the FBI and Justice Department ultimately decided not to pursue any charges over Hillary Clinton’s personal email use.
“Emails showing the Department of Justice was giving Hillary Clinton’s campaign inside information about an ongoing investigation into her email server is deeply disturbing and raises even more questions about Bill Clinton’s tarmac meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch,” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement.
Asked Tuesday about the email, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said he was not “going to comment directly on the stolen emails of a private citizen” but that “in general” the investigation “was done without any political interference.”
The emails were the latest batch of documents from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s account.
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