Republicans claim 'collusion' after email appears to show DOJ, Clinton campaign contact

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Republicans accused the Hillary Clinton campaign and Obama Justice Department of “collusion” on Tuesday after an email surfaced from the latest WikiLeaks document dump indicating the Clinton camp got a heads-up from the DOJ about one of the former secretary of state’s court cases.

The May 2015 email from Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said, “DOJ folks inform me there is a status hearing in this case this morning, so we could have a window into the judge's thinking about this proposed production schedule as quickly as today.”

The Fallon email apparently pertained to one of the lawsuits seeking the production of Clinton’s emails while at the State Department.

Information about a status hearing likely would have been public anyway – and it’s unclear whether there was any further contact between the DOJ and Clinton campaign.

But the email stoked GOP complaints that they had improper discussions about the former secretary of state’s emails, which the department investigated for months. Fallon happens to be a former spokesman with the Justice Department.

“Today’s report that Clinton’s campaign was in communication with the Obama Department of Justice on the email investigation shows a level of collusion which calls into question the entire investigation into her private server,” Donald Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller said in a statement.

The Republican National Committee also invoked the controversial tarmac meeting Attorney General Loretta Lynch had with Bill Clinton, before the FBI and Justice Department ultimately decided not to pursue any charges over Hillary Clinton’s personal email use.

“Emails showing the Department of Justice was giving Hillary Clinton’s campaign inside information about an ongoing investigation into her email server is deeply disturbing and raises even more questions about Bill Clinton’s tarmac meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch,” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement.

Asked Tuesday about the email, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said he was not “going to comment directly on the stolen emails of a private citizen” but that “in general” the investigation “was done without any political interference.”

The emails were part of a trove of documents purported to be from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s account.

WikiLeaks has already posted thousands of them, in three phases, and claims to have more.

The Clinton campaign has accused WikiLeaks of working on behalf of the Russian government to boost Trump.