Cheryl Mills, who served as Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff at the State Department, has kept her top secret security clearance even as the FBI investigates the former secretary’s private, unsecured email setup.
Fox News reported that two letters to congressional lawmakers, one of which was sent this month, indicated that Mills’ security clearance has not been suspended pending the probe, which is a departure from standard practice, according to individuals in the intelligence community.
In of the letters, both of which were sent to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), the State Department’s assistant secretary for legislative affairs indicated that Mills has maintained her clearance, explaining an earlier "administrative error" that caused the agency to "erroneously" report that Mills’ clearance was no longer active in October.
A letter authored by Mills’ lawyer on October 30, 2015, also spotlighted the State Department’s error and informed Grassley that Clinton’s former top aide "has an active Top Secret clearance."
Julia Frifield, State’s assistant secretary for legislative affairs, wrote in the February 18, 2016, letter that Mills’ security clearance would have been terminated when she left the agency two years ago had it not been for Clinton in January 2014 designating Mills to keep her clearance "to assist her in research."
"Due to an administrative error, the department did not process the former secretary’s designation. Accordingly, although former secretary Clinton properly designated Ms. Mills to retain clearance, the database reflected that Ms. Mills’ clearance was terminated," Frifield explained.
Frifield called the designation a "routine practice for former senior officials."
Frifield is a maximum donor to Clinton’s presidential campaign, Federal Election Commission records show. She also contributed to Clinton’s failed 2008 presidential bid.
A previous report in Fox News indicated that Mills was one of at least a dozen top Clinton aides whose email accounts handled top secret intelligence found on Clinton’s private server.
The State Department confirmed in January that 22 emails on Clinton’s server contain top secret information, and those messages were blocked from release. The agency has been routinely vetting and releasing Clinton’s emails, at least 1,818 of which have been found to contain classified information. The department has insisted that the messages were not classified during Clinton’s time as secretary of state.
Clinton has repeatedly said that she never sent nor received information marked classified on her private email. While critics have argued that Clinton’s unsecured email setup compromised national security, her campaign has dismissed that the controversy as a partisan effort to damage her presidential bid.