Hillary Clinton’s campaign has attempted to downplay a Democrat-backed inspector general’s damaging findings by arguing he somehow “coordinated” with Republican senators to leak details of the classified information found on Clinton’s server.
However, the inspector general for the intelligence community, Charles McCullough, was nominated by President Obama in Aug. 2011. He had the backing of many prominent Democrats at the time.
But a spokesman for Clinton’s campaign argued Wednesday McCullough had secretly pressured a pair of Republican senators to submit an inquiry to his office so he could “have an excuse” to reply with a letter that revealed the fact that Clinton’s server hosted material classified above “top secret.”
The Senate Intelligence Committee unanimously confirmed McCullough in Oct. 2011, when the Senate was still controlled by Democrats.
Sens. Dianne Feinstein, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, all Democrats, heaped praise on McCullough, who is the first individual to hold the position of the intelligence community’s watchdog.
Feinstein called the position “a big, big job, I think, of all of the IGs, maybe the biggest” before describing McCullough as “well-qualified” to fill it.
Despite the inspector general’s Democratic backing, Brian Fallon, Clinton’s campaign spokesman, accuses McCullough of participating in a “very coordinated leak” with Republicans in order to smear Clinton.
“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 said Wednesday, referring to McCullough’s concerns that at least two Clinton emails contained top secret intelligence.
Those findings have not been discredited, but were once called into question when, in November, an anonymous source told Politico McCullough’s office might be planning to walk back that claim.
Officials quickly disputed that report.
