By Julian Hattem – 01/28/16 06:00 AM EST
Six months after it began, the federal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server shows no signs of slowing down.
Former FBI officials said the length of the probe is not unusual and speculated that a decision on whether to file charges against Clinton or her top aides could come later this year, during the heat of the general election campaign.
“I don’t know that there’s any magical cutoff date,” said Ron Hosko, the FBI’s former assistant director of the criminal investigative division and a 30-year veteran of the bureau.
For Democrats, the extended investigation has become a source of some anxiety, with Republicans gleefully raising the prospect of the Democratic presidential front-runner being indicted.
“It does give pause to Democrats who are concerned that there may be another shoe to drop down the road,” said Andrew Smith, a political science professor at the University of New Hampshire.
The government has been examining the former secretary of State’s private email server since last July, when the inspector general for the intelligence community issued a security referral noting that classified information could have been mishandled.
That referral came months after Clinton acknowledged that she had exclusively used a personal email address housed on a private server during her tenure as secretary.
The scrutiny of her email practices has mounted since then, with more than 1,300 emails that passed through her server found to contain information that has since been classified, some at the highest levels.
https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/267269-fbis-clinton-investigation-not-letting-up
