The FBI dismissed claims by two former intelligence community inspector general employees who claimed China may have hacked Hillary Clinton’s private server, according to a report released Wednesday by two Republican senators.
The two intelligence community watchdogs said they discovered an anomaly in Mrs. Clinton’s emails while conducting a review of her server’s contents in 2015. Specifically, they discovered an email address tied to Mrs. Clinton’s email that was possibly forwarding her emails to a hostile actor in real-time, according to the report.
They took their concerns to the FBI, including anti-Trump G-Man Peter Strzok, according to notes from their interviews with Senate staffers. But the bureau wasn’t interested.
One of the inspector general employees, Frank Rucker, said Mr. Strzok was “aloof and dismissive,” according to the report.
“He was not very warm” and “didn’t ask many questions,” Mr. Rucker said. He said they never heard from the FBI again.
“He seemed nonplussed by the info and he didn’t ask any follow-up questions,” the report said.
Notes from staffers’ interviews with Mr. Rucker and Jeanette McMillan were released by Republican Sens. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. The senators made the interview notes public as part of their probe into whether China hacked Mrs. Clinton’s server.
Although the report did not reach a conclusion on whether Mrs. Clinton’s server was breached, Mr. Rucker and Ms. McMillian said they uncovered an anomaly.
Most notably, Mrs. Clinton’s email address appeared to be tied to an email address for a business known as Carter Heavy Industries. The ICIG employees said they believed the company was linked to a Chinese trucking company, but could not verify if that was true.
Mr. Rucker said it is possible the Carter Heavy Industries was routing Mrs. Clinton’s emails to someone else, but they could not conclusively prove if that was happening.
He told investigators he wasn’t qualified to understand the significance of the linked email address, but “it wasn’t normal.”
The email address was tied to all but about four of the 30,000 Clinton emails they reviewed.
Ultimately, the Senate investigators were unable to determine if the Carter Heavy Industries email address was evidence that Ms. Clinton’s server was hacked.
The FBI last year denied claims by President Trump that China had hacked Ms. Clinton’s private server. At the time, the bureau said it had not found any evidence her server was compromised.
A Justice Department Inspector General report issued in 2018 concluded that it was “possible” hostile actors gained access to Mrs. Clinton’s private email server. However, it also acknowledged that did not find any evidence her server was breached
FBI forensics agents assigned to the case said that there was “no way of determining” whether Mrs. Clinton’s server was compromised, according to the Justice Department Inspector General Report.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
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