The Federal Bureau of Investigation is reportedly in the process of setting up interviews with aides to former secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and has set a goal of eventually interviewing Clinton.
Though no dates have been set, a federal prosecutor has been calling attorneys for the aides to inform them of the request, according to two sources quoted in a Los Angeles Times report on Sunday.
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“The interviews are critical to understand the volume of information they have accumulated,” James McJunkin, a former head of the FBI’s Washington field office, told the publication. “They are likely nearing the end of the investigation and the agents need to interview these people to put the information in context.”
“They will then spend time aligning these statements with other information, emails, classified documents, etc., to determine whether there is a prosecutable case,” McJunkin added.
The FBI has been investigating whether Clinton’s use of a private server when she was secretary of state violated federal law. Of more than 30,000 emails that Clinton sent or received during her tenure that have been released by the State Department, more than 1,800 were marked as “classified.” Of those, more than 22 were marked as “top secret.”
Critics say Clinton’s use of a private server put that information at risk of being exposed to foreign governments and hackers. However, the former secretary has insisted she would not be prosecuted, and said she welcomes the investigation. “She first offered last August to meet and answer any questions they might have,” said Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon. “She would welcome the opportunity to help them complete their work.”
Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz sent a more guarded message last week, suggesting she wasn’t sure if Clinton would volunteer to speak with the FBI. “Those are questions you’d have to ask each of Hillary Clinton and anyone associated with Hillary Clinton,” Schultz said in an interview on the Fox Business Network.
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Though the investigation into the server arrangement is approximately nine months old, the probe reportedly expanded just in January to look at whether staff and resources at the State Department were used improperly on projects related to the nonprofit Clinton Foundation.
