Clinton campaign tries to use Fox News report to exonerate candidate in email scandal

Weiner's Wife

The Hillary Clinton campaign, in an unusual late-afternoon conference call, touted an exclusive Fox News report on the origin of the FBI probe into the candidate’s server – in an attempt to claim details in the report prove she did nothing wrong.

The report by Fox News’ Catherine Herridge, for the first time, identified emails that helped kick-start the current investigation. The emails were from top Clinton advisers and had earlier been released to the Benghazi select committee.
On the conference call reacting to the report, top Clinton campaign aides said those emails were not marked classified at the time they were sent. Press Secretary Brian Fallon said the campaign previously did not know which emails originally had been flagged, and called the Fox News report a “watershed” moment in understanding what led to the review. Calling the report “fortuitous” and saying they have no reason to doubt its veracity, the aides also emphasized the emails were not written by Clinton herself.
“We again would like to see the government agencies involved in this process to proceed as quickly as possible in conducting a review of the emails,” Fallon said. “We think it will vindicate all the points we made today on this whole matter.”
However, despite the Clinton campaign’s claims, a spokeswoman for the intelligence community inspector general reiterated to Fox News that the information in the emails was in fact considered classified at the time it was sent.
Fallon acknowledged they have a disagreement on that point with the intelligence community inspector general.Clinton campaign officials said on the call that, at worst, this is a dispute between two agencies, as the State Department also maintains the emails were not classified.
The emails identified by Fox News as helping spur the referral both pertained to Benghazi.
The first was forwarded by Clinton adviser Huma Abedin. The 2011 email forwards a warning about how then-deputy chief of mission Chris Stevens was "considering departure from Benghazi" amid deteriorating conditions in a nearby city.The email was mistakenly released by the State Department in full, and is now considered declassified.
The second was sent by Clinton aide Jake Sullivan. The partly redacted November 2012 email detailed how Libyan police had arrested "several people" with potential connections to the terror attack.
Abedin and Sullivan now work for the Clinton presidential campaign
Fox News understands those two emails were separate from four other emails that the inspector general flagged in July as containing classified information.
A statement from the IG’s office last month, though, referenced one of the two emails, pointing to an “inadvertent release of classified national security information” by the State Department through its FOIA process. That statement also acknowledged the disagreement between the two agencies, saying the department denies the “classified character” of the information “despite a definitive determination from the IC Interagency FOIA Process.”
Aside from that disagreement, the two emails also represent just a fraction of the hundreds of emails‎ that the IG and State Department have since flagged for containing potentially classified material.
The Clinton campaign argued Wednesday that this whole experience speaks to the government’s tendency toward classification.
“We think that this says more about the bent towards secrecy within some corners of the government. It says more about that than it does about Hillary Clinton’s email practices,” Fallon said.