Washington: US President Donald Trump made his first “Crooked Hillary” Twitter post less than 48 hours into the new year on Tuesday, accusing a former Clinton aide of “disregarding basic security protocols”, and calling his own Justice Department a “deep state”.

“Crooked Hillary Clinton’s top aid, Huma Abedin, has been accused of disregarding basic security protocols,” he wrote. “She put Classified Passwords into the hands of foreign agents. Remember sailors pictures on submarine? Jail! Deep State Justice Dept must finally act? Also on Comey & others”

Attacking his former Democratic opponent from the 2016 presidential election and taking aim at his own Justice Department struck familiar tones for the new year.

Almost 14 months after the 2016 presidential election, Trump has kept up a regular drumbeat of attacks on Clinton. Last year, Trump also criticised the Justice Department and Attorney General Jeff Sessions for not pursing investigations of his political opponents.

Tuesday morning’s Twitter post followed an article in The Daily Caller, a conservative publication that Trump closely monitors. The article said Abedin forwarded some government passwords to her private Yahoo email account in 2009, when Clinton was secretary of state. Yahoo was hacked in 2013, which affected all three billion of its accounts. After the breach, the data was offered for sale by a hacking collective based in Eastern Europe.

Trump also implored his administration to investigate Abedin. The term “deep state” typically refers to a shadow government of agency officials who secretly plot to influence policy; they are usually associated with countries that have authoritarian elements that undercut democratically elected leaders.

On Friday, the State Department released about 3,000 of Abedin’s work-related emails. The emails were found on the laptop of Abedin’s now estranged husband, Anthony Weiner, and were released as part of a public records request.

The emails found on Weiner’s computer are a sore spot for Clinton. James Comey, the former FBI director, had notified Congress shortly before the 2016 election about the existence of newly discovered emails that could be relevant to the closed investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state.

Clinton, in a book released last year, said Comey’s October 2016 disclosure hurt her campaign’s momentum and helped Trump win the election.

In his Twitter post, Trump also referred to the case of a Navy sailor who was jailed for taking pictures inside a military submarine. According to a report in Fox News, the sailor had hoped to receive a pardon from the president, but has not.