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 was classified. The official said that at one point an FBI colleague received a call from Kennedy in which Kennedy “asked his assistance in altering the email’s classification in exchange for a ‘quid pro quo.'” On Monday, both the FBI and State Department, however, denied any “quid pro quo.” In a statement, the FBI also said, “The FBI determined that one such email was classified at the Secret level. A senior State Department official requested the FBI re-review that email to determine whether it was in fact classified or whether it might be protected from release under a different FOIA exemption. A now-retired FBI official, who was not part of the subsequent Clinton investigation, told the State Department official that they would look into the matter. Having been previously
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