BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI
House Speaker Paul Ryan on Wednesday sent a letter to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper asking that Hillary Clinton be denied access to classified information for the remainder of the 2016 presidential campaign. Ryan sent the letter in the wake of FBI Director James Comey’s scathing assessment of Clinton’s “extremely careless” handling of classified materials during her time as secretary of State. “There is no legal requirement for you to provide Secretary Clinton with classified information, and it would send the wrong signal to all those charged with safeguarding our nation’s secrets if you choose to provide her access to this information despite the FBI’s findings,” Ryan wrote. Ryan’s formal request follows an interview on Fox News on Tuesday in which he argued that the presumptive Democratic nominee shouldn’t be permitted to get top-secret briefings.