MSNBC host Joe Scarborough on Friday called Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon a "hack" and "desperate" for attempting to delegitimize federal investigators who are looking into aspects of Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.
"No, let’s be serious here for a second. When your hack spokesman starts attacking inspector generals and the intel agencies and your hack spokesman starts attacking the integrity of inspectors general in John Kerry’s State Department, you’re desperate," Scarborough said, referring to Fallons’s accusatory response to reports that the State Department inspector general had subpoenaed documents from the Clinton Foundation.
Thursday evening, Fallon called the State Department inspector general’s investigation a "fishing expedition" and insinuated that the probe was politically motivated.
"It’s very hard, to be honest with you, for me personally to keep track of all the fishing expeditions that this [inspector general’s] office has conducted," Fallon said.
Scarborough said that he found the attacks sad, particularly since the investigators in question were nominated by President Obama, not Clinton’s partisan enemies.
Washington Post reporter Chris Cillizza agreed, saying that while Republicans have attacked the Clintons for years, there was no evidence that the State Department and the FBI could be politically motivated to damage Clinton.
"This is the State Department and the FBI. This isn't the House Select Committee on Benghazi," Cillizza said. "There are now three ongoing investigations, inquiries—there’s the State Department into the Clinton Foundation and Huma Abedin, there’s the State Department into the private email server, and the FBI into the private email server as well as what's going on in Congress."
The Washington Post reported that investigators with the State Department issued a subpoena to the Clinton Foundation looking for documents about foundation projects that required approval from the federal government during Hillary Clinton's time as secretary of state.
The subpoena also asks for records on Abedin’s unusual professional arrangement. For six months in 2012, she was simultaneously employed by the State Department, the Clinton Foundation, Clinton's personal office, and a consulting firm with connections to Clinton.