‘No Such Determination’: Obama Admin Disputes Politico’s Rush to End the Clinton Email Scandal

The mainstream news publication Politico rushed Friday to try to absolve Hillary Clinton of her classified-email scandal, but the Obama administration’s Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, disputed the newspaper’s report.

Politico reported that Clinton’s two original “Top Secret” emails sparked a federal investigation into Clinton’s private email server.

“After a review, intelligence agencies concluded that the two emails did not include highly classified intelligence secrets, the source said. Concerns about the emails’ classification helped trigger an ongoing FBI inquiry into Clinton’s private email setup,” reported Politico’s Josh Gerstein, based on one anonymous source in the United States “intelligence community.”

But a spokesman for James Clapper, the Obama administration’s Director of National Intelligence and the man tasked with evaluating the two “Top Secret” emails, said that’s not the case.

Here’s a passage from Politico’s first update to the story Friday night (this part has since been shortened):

However, after an initial version of this story was published Friday, a spokesman for Clapper indicated the issue had not been fully resolved. “ODNI has made no such determination and the review is ongoing,” Clapper spokesman Brian Hale said. He declined to say if any changes had been made in recent days to the strict handling requirements for the disputed emails.

UPDATE: DNI Clapper’s office denies final determination on classification of disputed Clinton emails https://t.co/fbpJv3dMFP

— Josh Gerstein (@joshgerstein) November 7, 2015

Breitbart News led the media in reporting on the existence of two “Top Secret” emails in Clinton’s server that contained classified information. The Inspector General of the intelligence community agreed that the emails had classified information in them.

Numerous other emails potentially containing classified information have been discovered since the State Department started searching through Clinton’s emails.