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Top GOP lawmaker discusses Clinton’s ‘quid pro quo’ with FBI

House Judiciary Committee member Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) speaks during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, September 21, 2016. (Photo byAFP)

US Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton may have conducted “quid pro quo” with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) during the agency’s probe into her email case, a senior GOP lawmaker says.

Clinton underwent a long-running federal investigation over her use of a private email server that involved exchanging thousands of potentially classified emails during her tenure as secretary of state, but she was cleared of any involvement  by the FBI earlier this year.

Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah told Fox News on Sunday that new documents about the investigation, which were handed to Congress on Friday, raise questions about a possible “quid pro quo” between State Department Undersecretary for Management Patrick Kennedy and an FBI official over a classified email.

“In return for altering the classification, the possibility of additional slots for the FBI at missions overseas was discussed,” Chaffetz said.

“This is a flashing red light of potential criminality,” he noted.

Changing an email’s classification would have allowed the former first lady and her aides to avoid publicly releasing it under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) rules.

US Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton (Photo by AFP)

The new FBI documents might be released to the public as soon as Monday, a congressional source told Fox News, citing overwhelming FOIA requests from the public.

Describing the revelation as “infuriating,” Chaffetz said it lays the ground for at least four Congressional hearings on the situation.

“Left to their own devices the FBI would never have provided these [records] to Congress and waited until the last minute. This is the third batch because [the FBI] didn’t think they were relevant,” he fumed.

The FBI denied Chaffetz’s allegations, saying that the discussions he was pointing to came up in the same conversation but were unrelated. The agency also denied any change of classification.

“The FBI determined that one such email was classified at the Secret level. A senior State Department official requested the FBI re-review that email to determine whether it was in fact classified or whether it might be protected from release under a different FOIA exemption,” the bureau told Fox News in a statement.


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