The long-running State Department investigation into former Secretary Hillary Clinton's private email server has extended to as many as 130 U.S. diplomats who sent messages to to her private email, The Washington Post reported.
The private server might have been scrubbed, but those officials who exchanged potentially classified material with her private email account have permitted the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security to get a glimpse of what it contained.
The investigation that began during the Obama administration has intensified now as it nears completion and the State Department has contacted those who exchanged retroactively classified emails that potentially violate security.
"This has nothing to do with who is in the White House," a senior State Department official told the Post. "This is about the time it took to go through millions of emails, which is about 3½ years."
However, amid the recent impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump's interactions with Ukraine in a potential investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden, many might see the latest development in the Clinton email server probe as another attack point for the president's use of power to investigate the political opposition, according to the Post.
"I'd like to think that this is just routine, but something strange is going on," Jeffrey Feltman, former assistant secretary for Near East Affairs, told the Post of an increased number of emails being flagged as classified, from a couple dozen to now 50.
"A couple of the emails cited by State as problems were sent after my May 2012 retirement, when I was already working for the United Nations."
The State Department rejects that notion, saying many career officials involved do not even know the names involved in the email investigation.
"The process is set up in a manner to completely avoid any appearance of political bias," another senior State Department official told the Post.
Most of the emails investigated were not sent directly to Hillary Clinton, but were passed through then-Deputy Secretary of State William Burns or ex-Director of Policy Planning Jake Sullivan, who then passed them on, according to the report.
"You have been identified as possibly bearing some culpability," the letters, which were sent to the 130 officials in August, read.
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