Does She Still Have A Security Clearance?

The Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is directly questioning whether Hillary Clinton still maintains her security clearance despite the ongoing FBI investigation into the mishandling of classified information, according to a new letter to Secretary of State John Kerry.

In the Aug. 24 letter, which marks a significant expansion of the Republican senator's inquiry, Sen. Charles Grassley writes, "Since the [intelligence community inspector general] IC IG made a referral to the FBI pursuant to 50 U.S.C. §3381, has Secretary Clinton's security clearance been suspended pending the outcome of the inquiry?”

The suspension of a clearance is standard practice, a kind of interim step taken to preserve security until an investigation is complete, according to current and former military intelligence officials.

"If you have a circle of people and they are the source of the leak, all of them, normally would be suspended from their positions, they can't go in the building," Chris Farell, a former special agent for Army counterintelligence, told Fox News. Farrell now works as an investigator for Judicial Watch, which is suing for Clinton records.

"The clearances would be suspended by the security manager and it would be made known that there is an active investigation into the loss of classified information, and no information should be shared with these individuals pending the outcome," Farrell added.

In the four-page letter, Grassley said, based on a letter from Clinton's personal attorney David Kendall, that neither he nor his associate Katherine M. Turner had sufficient security clearances to handle the emails -- which contained at least two highly classified documents identified by the intelligence community's IG.

More here