FBI documents: Clinton took State Department furniture

Newly declassified FBI documents suggested that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton took furnishings from the State Department.

According to the files released Monday, an unnamed former agent with the US Department of State told the FBI in an interview dated September 2, 2015, that “early in Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State, she and her staff were observed removing lamps and furniture from the State Department, which were transported to her residence in Washington, DC.”

The agent said he did not know “whether these items were ever returned to the government upon Clinton’s departure from the State Department.”

The State Department denied any wrongdoing by Clinton, according to the New York Post, stating that she only took home property that she owned.

After Bill Clinton’s tenure as president there were also accusations that the family stole furnishings from the White House; however, according to both Snopes and Politifact those accusations was mostly false.

The disclosure was included in 100 pages the FBI released from its now-closed investigation into whether the former secretary of state and her aides mishandled sensitive government information that flowed through the private email server located in her New York home.

The bureau documents also showed that a senior State Department official unsuccessfully sought the FBI’s help last year to change the classification level of an email from Hillary Clinton’s private server in a proposed bargain described as a “quid pro quo” that would have allowed the FBI to deploy more agents in foreign countries.

According to FBI records released Monday, State Department Undersecretary for Management Patrick F. Kennedy, a close aide to Clinton during her time as secretary of state, contacted an FBI official seeking to change an email’s classification. Notes on the conversation describe discussion about a “quid pro quo” in which the email’s classification would be changed and “State would reciprocate by allowing the FBI to place more agents in countries where they are presently forbidden.”

The records indicate that Kennedy made that suggestion, but both the FBI and State Department said Monday that it was the unidentified FBI official. Neither the declassification nor the increase in agents occurred.

At an evening rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump labeled the move “collusion” and declared it even worse than Watergate.

“This is one of the great miscarriages of justice,” he said, “in the history of our country.”

In an online video, Trump called the records proof of a plot — involving between the FBI, the Justice Department and the State Department — “to try to make Hillary Clinton look like an innocent person.”

Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said it was well known that there was disagreement among various government agencies “about the decisions to retroactively classify certain material in emails sent to Secretary Clinton… and we were not part of these disagreements that played out inside the government.”