Senior officials in the Justice Department and the FBI didn’t think much of the evidence, while investigators believed they had promising leads their bosses wouldn’t let them pursue, they said....
Amid the internal finger-pointing on the Clinton Foundation matter, some have blamed the FBI’s No. 2 official, deputy director Andrew McCabe, claiming he sought to stop agents from pursuing the case this summer. His defenders deny that, and say it was the Justice Department that kept pushing back on the investigation....
Much of the skepticism toward the case came from how it started—with the publication of a book suggesting possible financial misconduct and self-dealing surrounding the Clinton charity. The author of that book, Peter Schweizer—a former speechwriting consultant for President George W. Bush—was interviewed multiple times by FBI agents, people familiar with the matter said....
November 3, 2016
"Secret Recordings Fueled FBI Feud in Clinton Probe/Agents thought they had enough material to merit aggressively pursuing investigation into Clinton Foundation."
By Devlin Barrett and Christopher M. Matthews at the WSJ (the link should work).
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(the link should work)
Nope, paywall. But pasting the first sentence into google gave me a link that I could read, as always.
Lynch should have resigned as soon as her secret meeting with Bill became public
DOJ is now completely disgraced.
Fox News reports Hillary's aides laptops were NOT destroyed.
Jeralyn over at TalkLeft is saying Huma and Hillary are victims of Comey. She doesn't seem to grasp how corrupt Hillary is. Her comment section has descended into to deep, pro-Democrat government bias.
What must be remembered is that the DoJ has been thoroughly politicized and corrupted by the Obama Administration. D'Sousa went to prison for essentially little more than doing an anti-Obama film, while Boston law firm that routinely laundered money for Dem political campaigns, will probably be untouched. They have used litmus test hiring there for career Attys for the last eight years. They weren't going to find prosecutors who would go after the Clintons, even if they offered a large award. Meanwhile, the FBI has a director with a ten year term of office, and some independence. The Clinton matters stink to high heaven. If it were Republicans, they would be in prison for the remainder of their natural lives. But they are heavily protected by Obama, Lynch, and most of the prosecutors in the DoJ. The FBI and its agents are seeing the Rule of Law being destroyed around them, as the integrity of the organization they have dedicated their lives to is destroyed for political gain and profit by the Dems. No wonder there is a lot of striking out and leaking right now.
Why did they need secret recordings? The foundation is a corrupt influence-peddling scheme on its face. The Clintons didn't amass a $100M fortune because they give great speeches and build a $250M foundation that does little charitable work because they are NGO experts.
This is from the latest Wikileaks. Pretty funny:
'Since there are less than a dozen instances of this in the 300 it was easy. One is me sending her a clip, no commentary. Another is her emailing me & Huma about something that I subsequently followed up on my .gov account. We did that for each and could share that if need be. If they've somehow seen some of the other 55k, we'd need to see each to determine what they were.'
Trying to figure out if someone has seen more than just the few emails they released and combed through.
The dissent in the DoJ (and the FBI is part of the DoJ) is not about the "evidence," but partly the SJW crowd being against anything whatever that might disturb their crusade and partly the "must follow orders" mentality, against the "crime fighters."
They have used litmus test hiring there for career Attys for the last eight years.
If a president wanted to transform a nation, he would unleash hundreds of crusading leftist lawyers who hold views far outside of the American mainstream and give them power to push the frontiers.
That’s exactly what has happened in places Americans had hardly heard of before 2011 -- places like Ferguson.
The first step of the president’s and the attorney general’s "fundamental transformation" was finding fellow travelers with law degrees. Without hiring hundreds of lawyers committed to the president’s vision of transformation into powerful career positions within the Justice Department, the effort would likely fail.
The homogenous ideological backgrounds of the attorneys hired in the Civil Rights Division are essential to understanding what has happened to the nation.
https://pjmedia.com/blog/every-single-one-since-2009-obamas-doj-civil-rights-division-hired-only-leftist-lawyers-hundreds/?singlepage=true
https://pjmedia.com/every-single-one-pj-medias-investigation-of-justice-department-hiring-practices/
The DOJ has gone full "Political Coverup" by Obama/Lynch. They're not even trying to be subtle about it.
Trumps right: Drain the swamp.
Think about this - Peter Kadzik of the DoJ has been put in charge of the public corruption/pay-to-play Clinton investigation. This is the guy who recently had dinner with Leon Podesta, Crooked Hillary's campaign chair, and who was apparently involved with the two of them in the infamous Marc Rich pardon 16 years ago. Think that isn't a message to the FBI to stand down, regardless of the evidence of Clinton crimes? It has been clear for a long time that the big scandal was the Clintons trading access and official favors for cash, either personally, or for their foundation/slush fund. Probably the most egregious case seen by the FBI in a long night time. Easy to prove from comparing the money to what the other parties got, and even easier with the emails they now have. A lot of smoking guns there, showing how the sausage was made. They engaged in public corruption at industrial levels, and the DoJ is telling the FBI to essentially stand down.
"Fox News reports Hillary's aides laptops were NOT destroyed."
-- I bet someone in the FBI is saying, "We promised we'd destroy it when we were done. We're not done."
There is a lesson for the FBI and the DOJ in the Oregon Wildlife Refuge verdict. I haven't followed the whole thing, but it strikes me as amazing all 5 defendants were acquitted. Don't Federal prosecutors have something like a 90% conviction rate?
Jurors essentially showed the government a big middle finger. Portland Oregon isn't exactly a conservative bastion, but the Feds apparently had no credibility with regard to the incident.
The DOJ has no choice but to do a thorough and convincing investigation of the Clinton Foundation and the Email scandal now. They cannot get away with saying nothing was found to warrant further action. The very legitimacy of the government is at stake.
So, what else do we know about the relationship between Asst AG Kadzig and Crooked Hillary campaign chair Podesta? They were Georgetown Law classmates. Kadzig asked Podesta for a job with the Clinton campaign for his son. He gave Podesta a head's up about the email scandal. And he represented Podesta as his atty in the Ken Star investigation. If Bill Clinton meeting with AG Lynch right before his wife was interviewed by the FBI was the appearance of impropriety, then what is this, putting someone so historically close to the Clintons in general, and their campaign chair in particular, in charge of their public corruption investigation at the DoJ? My guess is that it violates both atty ethics rules and internal DoJ guidelines, but those rules are for the little guys, not the Clintons and their cronies.
Man. John Grisham has nothing on this.
@Bob Boyd - I respectfully disagree. You would probably be right if it were most everyone else besides the Clintons. But all evidence so far is that for much of the DoJ, from AG Lynch down, protecting the Clintons right now is more important than the long run effects of letting them get off would have on the Rule of Law.
It's going to be a long four years! Congress may as well set up a permanent committee on investigating Hillary. We're probably only seeing the tip of the iceberg so far.
At least it'll keep our mind off our growing deficit.
If Hillary is elected and not impeached, real violence against Washington might happen.
Jeez it almost seems like the system is RIGGED with all the government leveraging it's immense powers to protect Hillary, MSM voluntarily incurious about her roles in Iran deal or TPP or anything to do with Clinton Global Slush Fund, and every pop culture creature shilling for the system.
If Hillary is elected and not impeached, real violence against Washington might happen.
I sometimes think that we are in a similar time to when G Julius Caesar was assasinated, and his nephew and heir became the first Roman Emperor. Winning, at least for the Dem elites, is far more important than the rule of law, esp since winning for them now means control of the judicial apparatus. Cheating is moral, because their morality is winning. G Julius Caesar was assasinated partly because he was putting himself above the law. By the time Augustus ascended the throne, that had become irrelevant - the law didn't apply to the emperor. Instead, he made the law.
Maybe somebody here can answer this. How does a former Bush speechwriter who's not employed by the Clinton Foundation know what goes on inside the Foundation? How does a SUSPECT in an unrelated corruption case know what the Foundation did or did not do, and why exactly should we believe that suspect?
Andrew McCarthy's piece from National Review titled "Clinton emails are critical to the foundation investigation" has some very interesting analysis, especially the discussion revolving around criminal intent, motive, and the nexus with Hillary's pvt server.
It also lays bare what appears to be DOJ meddling and slow walking FBI inquiries into the C.F.
As usual with all this stuff - as I've been saying for a year now: If members of the FBI want to get anything to happen, they need to speak out publicly. They needed to speak out publicly immediately after Comey said that they were all unanimous recommending against indictment. I am mightily tired of "leaks" by "people familiar with the matter" that will never be heard or believed by anyone but conservatives.
Please don't tell me about how they would lose their pensions or whatever. If the FBI still has integrity, this is their duty.
"How does a former Bush speechwriter who's not employed by the Clinton Foundation know what goes on inside the Foundation?"
Schweizer is not just a "former Bush speechwriter". Ask yourself why he is characterized that way in the story. Then read his book to answer your question.
"How does a SUSPECT in an unrelated corruption case know what the Foundation did or did not do, and why exactly should we believe that suspect?"
If you were an FBI agent you may very well be asking yourself those questions. If so, what would you want to do? A) investigate the claims and answer those questions B) say to yourself, "I don't want to know."
Chris Gerrib- are you referring to Andrew McCarthy as a former Bush speechwriter? Or someone else?
McCarthy is a former US District Attorney for SDNY. He ran the prosecution of the blind sheik.
Oh, Schweizer. The movie Clinton Cash is interesting. I expected to find it ridiculous, but was surprised to find how few refutations there are.
Even the Podesta emails show the Clintons were concerned about the book, but people were too interested in Trump Drama to pay any attention to it.
Blogger Bruce Hayden said...
Think about this - Peter Kadzik of the DoJ has been put in charge of the public corruption/pay-to-play Clinton investigation. This is the guy who recently had dinner with Leon Podesta, Crooked Hillary's campaign chair, ....
Not only that but what about the emails from Kadzik sent to Podesta from his personal email account alerting the campaign of coming DOJ actions on the email investigations.
Drain the swamp indeed!!
Can someone write a defense of all of this?
Loretta Lynch given one position by Bill Clinton, one by Barack Obama.
She replaced Eric Holder, who played a major role in giving Marc Rich a Pardon via Bill Clinton.
John Podesta played a role in that pardon. His attorney was Peter Kadzig.
Kadzig is now an Assistant Attorney General. He was in communication with John Podesta throughout the FBI Investigation.
The #2 man at the FBI was given $650,000 by Terri MacAuliffe, long time associate of the Clintons. That's McCabe.
And Finally, Bill Clinton got on a private jet to meet with Loretta Lynch the night before:
Hillary Clinton gave her deposition at the FBI, accompanied by Cheryl Mills who also was being investigated.
Can anybody say that sounds like a trustoworthy situation? Can any of the lefties here say, yeah you should feel comfortable with that?
Schweizer is an excellent investigative reporter.
Remember the 60 minutes expose on insider trading in Congress? That was a real eye opener for me and prompted the passage of the "stock" act.
I read his book "Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets,"
also an excellent insight into the bullshit we are putting up with in DC..Term Limits can't come fast enough for me.
Can anybody say that sounds like a trustoworthy situation?
It's the same kind of corruption that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. And like Russia, our democratic government will likely be replaced by a full on kleptocracy.
How does a former Bush speechwriter who's not employed by the Clinton Foundation know what goes on inside the Foundation? -Gerrib
Your faith in Clinton omerta is touching. Have you been following Wikileaks?
To steal Glenn Greenwald's joke:
The updated list of Podesta Wikileaks documents that have been claimed or proven to be false.
I read his book "Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets,"
Sounds good.
Yes, the Podesta emails really drive this home.
The people who run elections and cover elections and hold office get incredibly wealthy from our Democracy. Now we learn they really only listen to and care about each other.
WisRich said...
The DOJ has gone full "Political Coverup" by Obama/Lynch. They're not even trying to be subtle about it.
Trumps right: Drain the swamp.
One big problem with draining the DC swamp is where to put the toxic sludge. We might have to build another major federal prison to hold all of the people who should go to jail. That would be money well spent. They deserve hard time - not some "Club Fed" soft-time country-club prison. The Democrat Party is more of an organized crime syndicate than a political party. It deserves to be treated as such.
The Foundation investigation is apparently in the US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of NY, Lynch's old stomping ground. If true, that is bad news if the US Attorney, an Obama appointee is involved.
Regardless, reports say DOJ is declining investigators basic tools like search warrants, subpoenas, wiretaps and a grand jury. DOJ is dirty through and through.
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