A senior State Department official who was tasked with overseeing the release of Hillary Clinton’s emails is retiring from government service.
“Patrick Kennedy will resign as under secretary for management on January 27, and retire from the Department of State on January 31,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner told the Washington Examiner. “A career foreign service officer, Under Secretary Kennedy joined the Department in 1973.”
Kennedy held senior diplomatic positions through Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama’s presidencies, culminating in his role as the secretary of state’s senior adviser on issues pertaining to the management of the State Department. Fox News first reported on his impending resignation.
In that capacity, he became a lightning rod for Republicans following the Benghazi terrorist attack. House GOP investigators faulted him for failing to provide adequate security to the Benghazi mission, although the State Department’s Accountability Review Board did not blame Kennedy. “The ARB downplayed Kennedy’s role in the decision-making that led to the inadequate security posture in Benghazi,” according to House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Republicans.
Kennedy came into political focus once again, in the course of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server. An FBI witness claimed that Kennedy offered a “quid pro quo” to an FBI official in an attempt to suppress an email that would undermine Clinton’s claim not to have classified information on her server.
The State Department said that was an unfair accusation. “Any real assertion that this was somehow a tit-for-tat, quid pro quo exchange in that manner frankly is insulting,” Toner said in October. “I can’t speak to what his or her intentions were saying these kinds of things, but clearly expressing a personal opinion about what happened.”
