GOP to query firms that ran Clinton’s private server

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Republicans stepped up their attacks Monday on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and pointed to newly released messages to allege that foreign donors to the Democratic presidential nominee’s family charity got preferential treatment from her department.

Congressional Republicans issued subpoenas to three technology companies that either made or serviced the server located in the basement of Clinton’s New York home. The subpoenas were issued Monday by House Science, Space and Technology Chairman Lamar Smith of Texas with the support of Senate Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.

In a joint statement, Smith and Johnson said the move was necessary after the three companies – Platte River Networks, Datto Inc. and SECNAP Network Security Corp. – declined to voluntarily answer questions to determine whether Clinton’s private server met government standards for record-keeping and security.

The subpoenas were among several developments that showed a new GOP emphasis on Clinton’s emails after the FBI recently closed its yearlong probe into whether she and her aides mishandled sensitive government information that flowed through her server.

The FBI recommended against criminal charges.

The State Department is reviewing nearly 15,000 previously undisclosed emails recovered as part of the FBI probe. Lawyers for the department told U.S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg on Monday they anticipate processing and releasing the first batch of these new emails in mid-October, raising the prospect that new messages sent or received by Clinton could become public just before November’s election.

Boasberg is overseeing production of the emails as part of a federal public-records lawsuit filed by the conservative legal advocacy group Judicial Watch. Representing the State Department, Justice Department lawyer Lisa Olson told the judge that officials do not yet know how many of the emails are work-related, rather than personal.

Clinton, who was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, had claimed she deleted only personal emails before returning more than 55,000 pages of her work-related messages to the State Department last year. The department has publicly released most of those emails.