"The FBI sought additional legal process, to include grand jury subpoenas, in order to obtain additional e-mails,” Bill Priestap, the bureau’s assistant director for counterintelligence, wrote. | Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo FBI reveals broader use of grand jury subpoenas in Clinton email probe A court filing discloses the bureau employed a legal tool to seek emails from accounts of some she corresponded with.

The FBI revealed Wednesday that it used grand jury subpoenas more broadly than previously known in the course of the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email account and server.

A top FBI official disclosed in a court filing that grand jury subpoenas were used to try to obtain records not only from Clinton’s account but also from accounts belonging to people she was in contact with.


“In instances where the FBI discovered evidence of the potential unauthorized transmission of classified information from the [Clinton] personal email servers to private third party email accounts of individuals with whom Secretary Clinton corresponded and could establish sufficient probable cause, the FBI sought additional legal process, to include grand jury subpoenas, in order to obtain additional e-mails relevant to the FBI’s investigation,” Bill Priestap, the bureau’s assistant director for counterintelligence, wrote in a declaration filed in federal court in Washington.

Priestap did not elaborate on which of Clinton’s associates had their email accounts targeted for grand jury subpoenas or whether they were notified of the requests.

The disclosure comes as Republicans, including President Donald Trump. have publicly renewed doubts about the thoroughness and propriety of the inquiry led by FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump fired in May.

“Wow, looks like James Comey exonerated Hillary Clinton long before the investigation was over … and so much more. A rigged system,” Trump wrote on Twitter earlier this month.

The presidential tweet followed a disclosure by Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina that testimony gathered in another inquiry found that two to three months before the FBI probe concluded, Comey had begun drafting a statement that Clinton would not be charged.

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After Comey announced the end of the investigation without charges in July 2016, Republican lawmakers repeatedly complained that he failed to use any mandatory legal process in the inquiry. Some said he should have used grand jury subpoenas to force Clinton’s lawyers to testify or to turn over laptops they used to handle and sort her messages.

Comey declined to address the allegations at the time, noting that grand jury actions are required to be secret by law.

However, subsequent Freedom of Information Act releases hinted at the use of grand jury subpoenas in the investigation. And in April, Priestap confirmed their use , but in a public court filing referred only to the subpoenas’ being used in an attempt to track down messages that service providers might have stored from Clinton’s account that she accessed via her BlackBerry in January through March 2009.

That confirmation and the new filing Wednesday came in connection with lawsuits filed by conservative watchdog groups Judicial Watch and the Cause of Action Institute, arguing that the State Department had not done enough to recover Clinton’s messages.

Back in April, Priestap also submitted a filing under seal with more details about the FBI investigation. Late last month, U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg ruled that virtually all that information should be made public if the government intended to rely on it. That ruling led to the new filing that provided more detail.

An FBI spokeswoman did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the development.

