A senior official at the U.S. State Department tried to push the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2015 into dropping its insistence that an email from Hillary Clinton's private server contained classified information, according to summaries of interviews with FBI officials released by the FBI on Monday.



According to the records, an FBI official, whose name is redacted, told investigators that Patrick Kennedy, the State Department's most senior manager, repeatedly "pressured" the FBI to declassify information in one of Clinton's emails. The information in that particular email originated from the FBI, which meant that the FBI had the last word on whether it remained classified.



The official said the State Department's office of legal counsel called him to question the FBI's ruling that the information was classified, but the FBI stood by its decision.



Soon after, one of the official's colleagues at the FBI received a call from Kennedy in which Kennedy "asked his assistance in altering the email's classification in exchange for a 'quid pro quo.'"



The FBI official said he also joined at least two discussions in which Kennedy "continued to pressure" the FBI about the email. The official said Kennedy appeared to be trying to protect Clinton by minimizing the appearance of classified government secrets in emails from the private server that Clinton used while she was secretary of state. The government forbids people from sending classified information via unsecured channels.



In a separate interview, another unnamed FBI official said Kennedy told him in a phone call that the FBI's insistence that the emails were classified "caused problems" for Kennedy. According to the interview summary, the official said he told Kennedy he would look into the email, which he had not yet seen, if the State Department would consider allowing more FBI agents to be posted in Iraq in exchange.



The State Department and the FBI both confirmed that the conversation about both the email's classification and that an increase in FBI slots in Iraq took place, but both said they were was no "quid pro quo."



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After a year-long FBI investigation into the server, FBI Director James Comey said in July he found that while laws governing classified information may have been broken no reasonable prosecutor would bring charges. He said, however, that Clinton and her staff had been "extremely careless" in handling classified information.



[...]



"After the conversation took place about the upgrading classification, at the end of that, there was a kind of, 'Oh, by the way, hey, we're looking at how we want more slots" in Iraq, Toner said, calling it a "clear pivot" in the topic of conversation.



[...]



Other officials have made similar complaints of unusual pressure not to mark information as classified in Clinton's emails last year. According to earlier documents the FBI released last month, at least one official at the State Department told investigators that there was pressure by senior department officials to mislead the public about the presence of classified information in Clinton's emails ahead of their public release.



[...]



The State Department has said these allegations are also false. About 30,000 emails Clinton that returned to the department after she left were released to the public in 2015 and 2016.