ADVERTISEMENT

Report: Clinton Aide, DOJ Agreed to Keep Certain Topics ‘Off-Limits’ in FBI Interview

Cheryl Mills, chief of staff to Hillary Clinton, in Haiti / AP
May 10, 2016

Hillary Clinton aide Cheryl Mills briefly walked out of an FBI interview when an investigator asked her an "off-limits" question about State Department emails, according to the Washington Post.

The Post reported that Mills and the Department of Justice had set pre-determined boundaries on the interview process. Investigators were reportedly supposed to avoid asking questions about the email production procedure at the State Department.

According to the report, Mills was caught off guard when an FBI agent pressed her on the issue, and asked to leave the room to confer with her attorney:

Near the beginning of a recent interview, an FBI investigator broached a topic with longtime Hillary Clinton aide Cheryl Mills that her lawyer and the Justice Department had agreed would be off limits, according to several people familiar with the matter.

Mills and her lawyer left the room — though both returned a short time later — and prosecutors were somewhat taken aback that their FBI colleague had ventured beyond what was anticipated, the people said. […]

The questions that were considered off limits had to do with the procedure used to produce emails to the State Department so they could possibly be released publicly, the people said. Mills, an attorney herself, was not supposed to be asked questions about that — and ultimately never was in the recent interview — because it was considered confidential as an example of attorney-client privilege, the people said.

Mills returned after a short time and completed the interview, according to the Post. Her attorney, Beth Wilkinson, told the paper that "Ms. Mills has cooperated with the government."

Clinton aides Huma Abedin and Bryan Pagliano have already been interviewed in the FBI investigation, and federal officials are expected to question Clinton in the coming weeks.