Ten Republican senators are urging Secretary of State John Kerry to revoke the security privileges of Hillary Clinton and close staff members after the FBI’s report that Clinton was careless in her handling of classified information while at the State Department.
“Failure to impose any sanctions for these clear violations of State Department procedure undermines the integrity of the State Department’s system for handling classified information and sends the wrong message to the Department’s employees,” the senators wrote in a letter Thursday.
{mosads}The letter names several of Clinton’s current and former staffers, two of whom are still employed by Clinton: Huma Abedin and Jake Sullivan.
Abedin is a longtime aide who served as Clinton’s deputy chief of staff at the State Department. Sullivan, also a former deputy chief of staff under Clinton at the department, is now a foreign policy adviser to her presidential campaign.
The senators also mention Cheryl Mills, who served as Clinton’s counselor and chief of staff during the entirety of her term as secretary of State, is no longer employed by Clinton.
The 10 senators on Thursday morning asked whether Clinton, Abedin, Mills and Sullivan have active security clearances with the State Department and demanded to know whether the department would impose administrative sanctions on them.
Further, they demanded to know whether the department had imposed sanctions on any other employees for similar offenses in the past.
The letter is part of a groundswell of outrage in the GOP over FBI Director James Comey’s decision not to recommend criminal charges against Clinton despite finding that she was “extremely careless” to handle classified information on a private email server.
GOP lawmakers from both chambers — including Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) — have formally called for Clinton’s security clearance to be revoked and for the FBI to release a transcript of its interview on Saturday with Clinton.
Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), both signees of Thursday’s letter, have also introduced a bill that would strip Clinton and several former State Department employees of their access to classified information.
Comey himself seemed to suggest that Clinton and her aides could be subject to administrative punishments, but the precise meaning of the remark remains a topic of fierce debate.
“To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences,” Comey said Tuesday. “To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.”
Other signees of Thursday’s letter include Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), David Perdue (R-Ga.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) and Jim Risch (R-Idaho).