According to a newspaper report, the US government is expanding its investigation into the email affair of former US Secretary of State and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. In recent weeks, US State Department investigators have contacted up to 130 officials for emails sent years ago, the Washington Post reported Saturday (local time).
In almost all cases, it was about emails that were sent to Clinton's inadequately protected e-mail account or got there in a roundabout way. The State Department investigators had begun a year and a half ago to contact the authorities because of the e-mail affair, writes the newspaper, citing current and former government officials. After these efforts were temporarily paralyzed, they had been strengthened again in August.
"This has nothing to do with who is in the White House," a senior State Department official said, referring to US President Donald Trump, who is a bitter opponent of Clinton. The fact that inquiries about the e-mail affair came only now has to do with the fact that it took three and a half years to review the millions of e-mails. Other ministry representatives, according to "Washington Post" political reasons for the investigation back.
Keep the Clinton e-mail topic alive
However, one ex-government official said the investigation was a means for Trump's Republicans to "keep the Clinton e-mail topic alive." In addition, it offers them the opportunity to "stain a whole bunch of democratic people in foreign policy". However, prosecution does not seem to threaten those affected, the Washington Post wrote.
As Secretary of State, Clinton had not used sufficiently secured private e-mail servers. The affair was investigated by the Federal Police FBI. Their then director James Comey gave a sharp reprimand for Clinton "extremely careless" behavior, but saw no evidence of criminally relevant misconduct.
Nevertheless, Trump demanded in the election campaign to put Clinton behind bars and invented for her the nickname "fraudulent Hillary". The chants "Lock them up!" To this day, they often sound at the gatherings of Trump supporters. Clinton recently blamed her defeat in the 2016 presidential election on returning FBI head Comey to re-investigate the e-mail affair just before election day.
Trump is currently under pressure for revelations over a telephone conversation with Ukrainian head of state Volodymyr Selenskyj. The US president is under suspicion of abuse of office for calling on the Ukrainian authorities' investigation of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter in the telephone conversation that took place at the end of July.