The U.S. Justice Department said Friday that, contrary to media reports, it did not receive a request to open a criminal investigation into how sensitive information was handled in Hillary Clinton’s private emails.
The New York Times reported Thursday that two inspectors general asked the Justice Department “to open a criminal investigation into whether sensitive government information was mishandled in connection with the personal email account Hillary Rodham Clinton used as secretary of state.” The language of that report originally cast Clinton as a target of the requested probe, but notably was changed after Times reporters received complaints from Clinton’s presidential campaign.
The agency now says that it what it received was “not a criminal referral,” but a request related to the potential compromise of classified information, according to Washington Post report Sari Horowitz:
The Department of Justice now correcting their earlier statement & saying the referral regarding Clinton emails was not a criminal inquiry.
— Sari Horwitz (@SariHorwitz) July 24, 2015
Correct from DOJ:Dept has received a referral related to the potential compromise of classified information. It is not a criminal referral.”
— Sari Horwitz (@SariHorwitz) July 24, 2015
Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), the top Democrat on the select House committee investigating the Benghazi attacks, also rejected the notion that the inspectors general of the State Department and intelligence agencies asked for a criminal probe into Clinton’s email account.
“I spoke personally to the State Department inspector general on Thursday, and he said he never asked the Justice Department to launch a criminal investigation of Secretary Clinton’s email usage,” Cummings said in a statement, as quoted by The Hill.
Cummings added that the State Department inspector general “told me the Intelligence Community IG notified the Justice Department and Congress that they identified classified information in a few emails that were part of the [Freedom of Information Act] review, and that none of those emails had been previously marked as classified,” according to The Hill.
