Hillary Clinton's lawyer had 'top secret' clearance, but that wasn't good enough, top lawmaker says
Two BigLaw attorneys representing Hillary Clinton had “top secret” clearances from the Department of Justice when they held emails she kept on personal electronic devices when she was U.S. Secretary of State.
But those clearances weren’t sufficient, because a few of the emails were classified at a higher level, as “top secret/sensitive compartmented information,” the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said in a Tuesday letter to Clinton’s successor, Secretary of State John Kerry, McClatchy reports.
It appears, however, that none of the emails may have been marked as classified, even if they contained classified information: Attorney David Kendall of Williams & Connolly, who has represented Clinton for 20 years, said in a Monday letter to Sen. Charles Grassley that on Dec. 5, 2014, when Clinton turned over 30,490 official emails to the State Department, “none of those emails was classified.”
Nonetheless, Grassley said in his Tuesday letter to Kerry that “the transmission of classified material to an individual unauthorized to possess it is a serious national security risk” and “raises legitimate questions as to whether the information was properly secured from foreign governments and other entities.”
Clinton is considered a front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination.
CBS News also has a story.
Related coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “Top lawmaker says Hillary Clinton’s attorney may have lacked security clearance to hold her email”
