US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News in an interview on Friday that he and his office are working to release the e-mails of Hillary Clinton before the 3 November presidential election.
“We’re going to get there. We’re going to get this information out so the American people can see it", Pompeo asserted. "We’re doing it as fast as we can. I certainly think there’ll be more to see before the election".
The top US diplomat also stressed that the release would be done in a way that "protects the intelligence sources that we need to protect".
His remarks come after hints from Trump, who in a Thursday interview with Fox Business took verbal shots at Pompeo and Attorney General William Barr, denouncing the two for not moving fast enough to get the emails out.
“They are in the State Department but Mike Pompeo has been unable to get them out which is very sad actually", Trump said. "I’m not happy about him for that reason. He was unable to get them out. I don’t know why. You’re running the State Department, you get them out".
Regarding Barr, Trump mulled that his appointee "is going to go down as either the greatest attorney general in the history of the country or he’s going to go down as, you know, a very sad situation".
Trump has been ramping up his case for additional Hillary Clinton email releases, after he announced a "total declassification" of documents related to what he dubs a "Russia hoax" and a Clinton scandal that roots in 2015. The president also said to have ordered the declassification long ago, but complained that "people have acted very slowly".
At the time, one of Pompeo's predecessors in the position of Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was revealed to have been using a private server for her work-related correspondence and ignoring a government one, citing "convenience". After she was denounced for potentially violating federal law during her 2016 presidential campaign, an investigation was launched - however, it did not result into prosecution, although FBI said that Clinton had been "extremely careless".
Now, Trump apparently wants to revive the case, some time before Pompeo's interview telling the conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh that Clinton "should be in jail". His efforts come as new documents emerge suggesting that, in order to distract attention from the email scandal, Clinton masterminded the plot to "tie" Trump's 2016 election campaign with Russia. Trump's alleged "collusion", however, was dismissed not only by POTUS himself, but also by Moscow and special investigator Robert Mueller finding no evidence to back the suggestions in his report on the matter.