Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) wants to obtain emails between ex-President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
“I write to request email communications between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama. 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,'” Johnson wrote to Archivist of the U.S. David Ferriero on Oct. 31.
Johnson, 64, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, 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.”
Johnson’s request was based on a message from former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok to James Rybicki, who was serving as chief of staff for FBI Director James Comey when the email was sent on June 28, 2016.
“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,” Strzok wrote.
Johnson said in the letter on Thursday that based on Strzok’s message to Rybicki, “it appears that multiple emails exist between Secretary Clinton and President Obama.”
E.W. “Bill” Priestap, the FBI’s former assistant director for counterintelligence, has also said that messages to and from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on her private email system were found in the Obama White House.
Johnson said he wants the documents as soon as possible and no later than 5 p.m. on Nov. 14.
Strzok’s email was sent a week before Comey told the nation he was advising no charges be brought against Clinton for using a personal email server to send a slew of messages while secretary of state.
Comey admitted Clinton’s emails may have been hacked into and Strzok wrote in another email in May 2016 that FBI agents knew “foreign actors” accessed some of Clinton’s messages.
Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) told The Epoch Times in August that “foreign actors actually had access to the server.”
“The question is, to what extent,” he added.
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) told Epoch Times earlier this year that the U.S. intelligence community has established, without a doubt, that China hacked Clinton’s emails and that the FBI refused to examine the evidence.
A State Department review of Clinton’s use of the unauthorized email server released in mid-Oct. found 38 people culpable of “failure to safeguard classified information.”
“Instances of classified information being deliberately transmitted via unclassified email were the rare exception and resulted in adjudicated security violations,” according to the report released by the Senate Finance Committee. “There was no persuasive evidence of systemic, deliberate mishandling of classified information.”
The report doesn’t identify any of the culpable people and doesn’t differentiate between current and former officials. The inquiry, conducted by the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, wasn’t punitive in nature. Officials who were found culpable received a security violation citation. Those who couldn’t be reached have a letter in their files that allows for an appeal once they learn of the violation.
Clinton handed over 33,000 emails to Congress, the State Department, and the FBI after House Republicans discovered her private email account as part of the inquiry into the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi. The State Department’s review didn’t include the thousands of emails subpoenaed by Congress but deleted by Clinton’s server administrator.
Ivan Pentchoukov contributed to this report.
