Backlash Grows Months After the FBI’s Sham Investigation Into Hillary Clinton

“What Difference Does It Make.” Those simple words offer a perfect glimpse into the life and times of Hillary Clinton. A woman who gets away with everything and anything, and who now wants to be President of these United States.

From her earliest days as a public figure, an aura of shadiness and lack of accountability permeates. For starters, there’s the infamous 1978 case of her turning $1,000 into $100,000 by trading cattle futures, an endeavor in which she had no expertise.

Naturally, nothing ever came of the cattle trading incident, kicking off a pattern that has continued to play out throughout her career.  It’s this reality that has made her increasingly bold — and dangerous.

– From July’s post: “What Difference Does It Make” – Thoughts on the Non-Indictment of Hillary Clinton

The FBI’s sham investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server represents the latest corrosive nail in the coffin of the faith the American public once held in its “esteemed” institutions to do what’s right and just by the people.

Months after James Comey cleared her in an utterly embarrassing press conference, many additional revelations have emerged, and outrage about how the investigation was conducted continues to grow.

For example, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions recently had the following to say according to the Daily Caller:

Jeff Sessions thinks the United States Senate should investigate the FBI for its handling of the probe into Hillary Clinton’s email server, specifically the way the bureau granted Cheryl Mills immunity and appeared to destroy evidence pertinent to the investigation.

“This is scary to me,” Sessions added. “I tried not to be critical of Comey at first.”

“I really don’t see how Congress can issue a subpoena for records and they then destroy those records,” Sessions wondered aloud. “I am telling you that every business knows that if they get a subpoena for business records, and they destroy those records, they are subject to criminal prosecution and will be prosecuted.”

Those are pretty strong words, but it’s not just Republican politicians who are outraged. There appears to be growing anger within the FBI itself, as agency veterans explained to the New York Post:

Veteran FBI agents say FBI Director James Comey has permanently damaged the bureau’s reputation for uncompromising investigations with his “cowardly” whitewash of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information using an unauthorized private email server.

Feeling the heat from congressional critics, Comey last week argued that the case was investigated by career FBI agents, “So if I blew it, they blew it, too.”

But agents say Comey tied investigators’ hands by agreeing to unheard-of ground rules and other demands by the lawyers for Clinton and her aides that limited their investigation.

“In my 25 years with the bureau, I never had any ground rules in my interviews,” said retired agent Dennis V. Hughes, the first chief of the FBI’s computer investigations unit.

Instead of going to prosecutors and insisting on using grand jury leverage to compel testimony and seize evidence, Comey allowed immunity for several key witnesses, including potential targets.

The immunity agreements came with outrageous side deals, including preventing agents from searching for any documents on a Dell laptop owned by former Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills generated after Jan. 31, 2015, when she communicated with the server administrator who destroyed subpoenaed emails.

Comey also agreed to have Mills’ laptop destroyed after the restricted search, denying Congress the chance to look at it and making the FBI an accomplice to the destruction of evidence.

Comey’s immunized witnesses nonetheless suffered chronic lapses in memory, made unsubstantiated claims of attorney-client privilege upon tougher questioning and at least two gave demonstrably false statements. And yet Comey indulged it all.

What’s more, Comey cut a deal to give Clinton a “voluntary” witness interview on a major holiday, and even let her ex-chief of staff sit in on the interview as a lawyer, even though she, too, was under investigation.

Clinton’s interview, the culmination of a yearlong investigation, lasted just 3½ hours. Despite some 40 bouts of amnesia, she wasn’t called back for questioning; and three days later, Comey cleared her of criminal wrongdoing.

“The FBI has politicized itself, and its reputation will suffer for a long time,” Hughes said. “I hold Director Comey responsible.”

Agreed retired FBI agent Michael M. Biasello: “Comey has singlehandedly ruined the reputation of the organization.”

The accommodations afforded Clinton and her aides are “unprecedented,” Biasello added, “which is another way of saying this outcome was by design.” He called Comey’s decision not to seek charges “cowardly.”

“Each month for 27 years, I received oral and computer admonishments concerning the proper protocol for handling top secret and other classified material, and was informed of the harsh penalties, to include prosecution and incarceration,” for mishandling such material, he pointed out. “Had myself or my colleagues engaged in behavior of the magnitude of Hillary Clinton, as described by Comey, we would be serving time in Leavenworth.”

Former FBI official I.C. Smith knows a thing or two about Clinton corruption. After working at FBI headquarters as a section chief in the National Security Division, he retired as special agent in charge of the Little Rock, Ark., field office, where he investigated top Clinton fundraisers for public corruption and even Chinese espionage.

“FBI agents upset with Comey’s decision have every reason to feel that way,” Smith said. “Clearly there was a different standard applied to Clinton.”

Smith said Congress should subpoena the case’s agents to testify about the direction they received from Comey and their supervisors: “It would be interesting to see what the results would be if those involved with the investigation were questioned under oath.”

Comey made the 25 agents who worked on the case sign nondisclosure agreements. But others say morale has sunk inside the bureau.

“The director is giving the bureau a bad rap with all the gaps in the investigation,” one agent in the Washington field office said. “There’s a perception that the FBI has been politicized and let down the country.”

For yet more on how Hillary was treated with kid gloves, let’s turn to a few excerpts from an article published in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, The FBI Treated Clinton With Kid Gloves:

Tim Kaine repeatedly defended Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server during Tuesday night’s vice-presidential debate. “The FBI did an investigation,” he said at one point, “and they concluded that there was no reasonable prosecutor who would take it further.” But such a statement is credible only if it follows a real criminal investigation—that is, the sort of investigation that the FBI and the Justice Department conduct when they actually care about a case and want convictions.

We know all too well what that kind of investigation looks like, as two of the lawyers who defended a recent target: former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell. That story had a happy ending for the governor and his wife. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled in their favor this summer and all charges were dropped in September. But their victory certainly wasn’t due to lack of investigatory zeal on the part of the FBI and Justice Department. 

Below are only a few of the heavy-handed tactics federal investigators used to build their case against the McDonnells. See how they compare to how Mrs. Clinton was treated.

Conduct ambush interviews. The first contact between law enforcement and the McDonnells was an ambush interview of the governor’s wife. The agents lied to her about the topic of the meeting, forbade Gov. McDonnell’s staff from attending, and then grilled her on their suspicions about potential public corruption. Statements from that interview later took center stage in the trial of her and her husband.

In Mrs. Clinton’s case, no ambush interviews were conducted, and witnesses were generously accommodated. The FBI and Justice Department even allowed a fact witness and potential target—Cheryl Mills, formerly the State Department’s chief of staff—to simultaneously represent Mrs. Clinton as her counsel.

Immunize only witnesses who can help deliver convictions. One person in Gov. McDonnell’s case got immunity: Jonnie Williams, the prosecution’s star witness. For his testimony, Mr. Williams earned a wealth of blanket immunity—not simply from potential bribery prosecution but also from unrelated crimes he might have committed (including securities and tax fraud). Reluctant witnesses—Gov. McDonnell’s children and friends—were called before a grand jury and forced to testify.

Contrast that with Mrs. Clinton’s case. Much of her staff was immunized in exchange for simply meeting with investigators. None of them appear to have been pressed for information, or given any incentive whatsoever to spill on the boss.

Construe “corruption” broadly. Investigators of Gov. McDonnell took the most expansive possible reading of the law. They argued to the Supreme Court this spring that it was a felony for the governor to arrange meetings between a benefactor and other government officials, even without trying to sway the ultimate decision. 

Yet the FBI appears to have done no investigation into how Secretary Clinton’s conduct while in office was affected by massive donations to the Clinton Foundation or large payments for speeches given by her husband, former President Bill Clinton. Journalists have unearthed extensive evidence of special treatment: The Associated Press reported that during the first half of her tenure, Mrs. Clinton had meetings or phone calls scheduled with 154 private interests; 85 were Clinton Foundation donors, who in total had pledged or given as much as $156 million.

Claim that concealment proves consciousness of guilt. In Gov. McDonnell’s case, there was no evidence—none—that he ever suspected his conduct could be criminal. Prosecutors tried to show criminal intent by arguing that he “hid” gifts by declining to list them on annual disclosure forms. But Gov. McDonnell complied with Virginia’s disclosure requirements in virtually all respects. The law simply did not require much information to be disclosed. Further, many of his family and staff knew about the gifts. Still, prosecutors claimed that failure to tell the public sufficed to prove a guilty mind.

FBI Director James Comey said that in Mrs. Clinton’s case there was no evidence of criminal intent. Yet she set up a private email server in her basement and permanently deleted thousands of the emails it contained. A plausible motive would be shielding her activities from public scrutiny. The Comey standard—that direct evidence of knowing criminality is needed to prosecute—is certainly not the one that his agency and the Justice Department applied to Gov. McDonnell for more than three years.

To be clear, we aren’t endorsing these heavy-handed tactics, many of which are befitting Inspector Javert of “Les Misérables.” But these are the sorts of things investigators do when they are serious about bringing criminal charges. In deciding whether the investigation into Mrs. Clinton was a real one—as opposed to a grand, expensive spectacle of law-enforcement theater—Gov. McDonnell’s treatment is instructive.

With that out of the way, let’s examine some of the latest disturbing revelations related to this “closed” case.

First from The Hill:

The FBI’s notes on its investigation into Hillary Clinton‘s private email server raise questions about two “bankers boxes” of printed emails that went missing in the course of the probe, Fox News reports. 

Among the FBI’s lengthy report are its notes from a 2015 interview with an unnamed Office of Information Programs and Services (IPS) employee, which were heavily redacted. The notes say that IPS officials were told that there were 14 bankers boxes of emails at Clinton’s home, but when they were picked up from her lawyer’s office, there were only 12. 

The report also points out that emails dated from early 2009, at the start of her term, were missing. The FBI said it’s not clear if she was using another email address at that time. 

Now how about about the following, from the Wall Street Journal:

WASHINGTON—Newly disclosed emails show top Obama administration officials were in close contact with Hillary Clinton’s nascent presidential campaign in early 2015 about the potential fallout from revelations that the former secretary of state used a private email server.

Their discussion included a request from the White House communications director to her counterpart at the State Department to see if it was possible to arrange for Secretary of State John Kerry to avoid questions during media appearances about Mrs. Clinton’s email arrangement.

In another instance, a top State Department official assured an attorney for Mrs. Clinton that, contrary to media reports, a department official hadn’t told Congress that Mrs. Clinton erred in using a private email account.

The emails highlight the revolving door between the State Department, the White House and the Clinton campaign in early 2015 as Mrs. Clinton geared up to run for president.

Ten days after the story broke, White House communications director Jennifer Palmieri emailed State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki to ask, “between us on the shows…think we can get this done so he is not asked about email.” That apparently referred to Mr. Kerry, who appeared in an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation” three days later.

Ms. Palmieri had previously announced she would be leaving the administration to join Mrs. Clinton’s campaign in mid-2015, but was still at the White House when she sent the email. Other emails show Ms. Palmieri helped arrange for Ms. Psaki to move from the State Department to the White House communications job Ms. Palmieri was vacating. “Agree completely and working to crush on my end,” wrote back Ms. Psaki, who would move to the White House weeks later.

A day later, Ms. Psaki added, “Good to go on killing CBS idea.” She continued, “And we are going to hold on any other TV options just given the swirl of crap out there.” Mr. Kerry wasn’t asked on CBS about the email server, though it isn’t clear how Ms. Psaki could have guaranteed that.

I think we can all take a guess about how they achieved that.

The RNC also obtained an entirely redacted discussion between nearly a dozen top White House communications officials with a subject line referring to Mr. Kerry’s appearance on CBS. A White House official said the internal debate at the time was about whether Mr. Kerry should appear on the shows at all, rather than any attempt to influence what questions were asked.

So why was it entirely redacted then? Must’ve been more content about yoga and grandchildren.

In another email coming from the State Department, Patrick Kennedy, the undersecretary for management, told Heather Samuelson, one of Mrs. Clinton’s attorneys, about new documents the State Department had posted concerning the former secretary of state.

Ms. Samuelson was one of the attorneys who reviewed Mrs. Clinton’s emails to determine which were government-related and which were personal before providing the official ones to the State Department. She was interviewed by the FBI as part of its probe and granted limited immunity in exchange for turning over her laptop as part of the investigation.

So much immunity for so little prosecution. Unlike what would happen to the rest of us.

In another exchange, Mr. Kennedy told Ms. Samuelson that Politico was “running [a] story that State official said Secretary Clinton did wrong thing. Wildly inaccurate reporting.”

A Politico spokesman said the organization stood by its reporting. The story reported that Joyce Barr, assistant secretary of state for administration, had said in testimony to Congress that Mrs. Clinton’s record-keeping practices were “not acceptable.” An internal watchdog report later concluded that Mrs. Clinton’s email use wasn’t permitted under State policy.

But hey…

In Liberty,
Michael Krieger

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