The FBI probe into Hillary Clinton’s use of personal email at the State Department has reportedly turned to possible violations of public corruption laws, with investigators specifically looking at the "possible intersection" of Clinton Foundation donations and State Department business.
Fox News exclusively reported:
This track is in addition to the focus on classified material found on Clinton’s personal server.
"The agents are investigating the possible intersection of Clinton Foundation donations, the dispensation of State Department contracts and whether regular processes were followed," one source said.
The development follows press reports over the past year about the potential overlap of State Department and Clinton Foundation work, and questions over whether donors benefited from their contacts inside the administration.
The Clinton Foundation is a public charity, known as a 501(c)(3). It had grants and contributions in excess of $144 million in 2013, the most current available data.
The expansion of the probe was confirmed by three unnamed intelligence sources, one of whom indicated that FBI agents would be angry if a prosecution was not pursued. The individual said that "many previous public corruption cases have been made and successfully prosecuted with much less evidence than what is emerging in this investigation."
One source pointed to the case of former CIA Director David Petraeus, to which the Clinton inquiry has been compared, as reason for the FBI to pursue a prosecution in the case involving the former secretary of state. Some FBI agents believe Petraeus was not sufficiently punished for sharing classified information with his former mistress, the intelligence source said.
Petraeus pled guilty to a misdemeanor in 2015 and was sentenced to two years probation and slapped with a $100,000 fine. The exposure of classified information in Clinton’s case has been more sizable, as the count of classified emails held on her personal server has increased to at least 1,340.
The FBI has been investigating Clinton’s personal email setup since the intelligence community inspector general determined last year that at least two emails held top secret information at the time they were sent or received. A separate intelligence review confirmed those findings despite objections from the State Department.
Last week, correspondences newly released by the State Department showed that Clinton instructed an aide to send her information using "nonsecure" channels in 2011.
Clinton has insisted that she never sent nor received information marked classified on her personal email account while heading the State Department.
"The reported expansion of the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s secret email server to include public corruption is a very troubling development," Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus said in a statement Monday.
"The favoritism toward donors to Clinton’s family foundation from her own State Department is undeniable and Democrats must now be rethinking whether it was smart to put all of their eggs in one basket."