By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com
Federal prosecutors investigating Hillary Clinton’s email server issued grand jury subpoenas in the case, according to a court filing this week, Politico reports.
It previously wasn’t known that the FBI had sought grand jury subpoenas, which indicates authorities were investigating a crime.
The subpoenas were used in an unsuccessful attempt to obtain achieved copies of some of Clinton’s old email messages, according to a filing in a civil lawsuit.
“The FBI…obtained grand jury subpoenas related to the Blackberry e-mail accounts, which produced no responsive materials, as the requested data was outside the retention time utilized by those providers,” FBI Assistant Director for the Counterintelligence Division E.W. Priestap wrote in a declaration filed Monday in federal court in Washington.
Details of the subpoenas were unclear, but it appears AT&T and Cingular were targeted.
Politico wrote:
While most investigative work in the probe was done via voluntary interviews and provision of evidence, prosecutors and the FBI eventually turned to mandatory process again when the investigation was reactivated weeks before the presidential election. A search warrant was obtained in late October to review copies of additional email messages discovered on a laptop seized from former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), the estranged husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin. The warrant required the FBI to indicate probable cause that the laptop contained evidence of a crime or some sort of contraband.
Priestap’s declaration was filed in connection with lawsuits conservative watchdog groups Judicial Watch and Cause of Action Institute filed against former Secretary of State John Kerry and Archivist of the U.S. David Ferriero in an effort to force the government to take additional steps to try to recover Clinton’s work-related messages. Tens of thousands of those messages have been retrieved and have already been made public by the State Department.
The government’s new court filing, including Priestap’s statement, sought to establish that there is nothing practical officials can do at this point to try to recover more of Clinton’s messages.
However, Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said he’s puzzled that the FBI revealed the grand jury action at this juncture.
