Hillary Clinton’s campaign on Wednesday dismissed an inspector general’s discovery of highly classified material on her private emails by arguing the findings were the work of a Republican-controlled watchdog.
Brian Fallon, Clinton’s campaign spokesman, called the Tuesday release of a letter from the intelligence community’s inspector general part of a “very coordinated leak” aimed at hurting Clinton’s image.
“Two months ago, there was a Politico report that directly challenged the finding of this inspector general, and I don’t think he liked that very much,” Fallon said of the inspector general Wednesday morning on CNN’s “New Day.” “So I think that he put two Republican senators up to sending him a letter so that he would have an excuse to resurface the same allegations he made back in the summer that have been discredited.”
Fallon was referring to an article published in early November in which Politico quoted an anonymous source that undermined Inspector General Charles McCullough’s public concerns about the emails.
According to Fallon’s explanation of events, McCullough had somehow encouraged Sens. Bob Corker and Richard Burr, the main recipients of the letter in question, to submit an inquiry to him in secret so he could “have an excuse” to lay out his findings in another nonpublic letter.
McCullough’s letter indicated Clinton had sent or received information classified above top secret. But Fallon argued the email described in the inspector general’s letter was nothing more than a New York Times story about drones that had been forwarded to Clinton.
“I think most Americans, if they saw the actual emails, would agree that it is a fabrication to suggest that the forwarding of a news article should be treated as a mishandling of classified information,” Fallon said.
Neither McCullough nor the State Department has commented on the contents of the emails identified as containing material classified as “top secret” or higher.
Clinton’s spokesman attempted to downplay the significance of the newest revelations by pointing to a bureaucratic disagreement as the reason for the unresolved issue of classified material.
“This is fundamentally the same issue that’s been going on since this summer,” he said. “What’s going on is we have an inter-agency dispute about what’s classified and what’s not. The State Department has attested these emails that were on Hillary Clinton’s server were not classified at the time they were sent or received.”
