By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com
A former FBI official said he – not the State Department – suggested a “quid pro quo” over Hillary Clinton’s private emails.
The former official, Brian McCauley, said Tuesday that he offered to not classify a disputed email if the State Department restored two spots that the FBI had lost in the Baghdad embassy, The New York Times reports.
But McCauley said the deal was off when he realized it involved Clinton and the 2012 Benghazi attack.
“When I found that out, all bets were off; it wasn’t even negotiable,” the former F.B.I. official, Brian McCauley, said in a telephone interview with the Times.
Here’s how it went down, according to McCauley. Patrick F. Kennedy, a senior State Department official, wanted the FBI to agree not to classify the email in dispute. McCauley said he agreed to help but only if the State Department opened two spots in the Baghdad embassy.
“I’m the one that threw that out there,” Mr. McCauley said of the offer, adding that the offer was not an unusual way for federal agencies to “help each other and work with each other.”
McCauley acknowledged, “it was a quid pro quo; I don’t deny it.”
