The former head of the FBI’s New York office tells The American Spectator that the Department of Justice quashed an investigation of the Clinton Foundation, an outfit that he says rates an investigation under the same statutes used to prosecute the mafia.

“They are a crime family,” James Kallstrom tells The American Spectator of Bill and Hillary Clinton. “The Clinton Foundation is an absolute scam. It should be investigated under the RICO statutes.”

The Wall Street Journal reported this weekend that the Justice Department spiked an investigation of the controversial nonprofit by the FBI. Earlier reporting by the Journal noted hundreds of thousands of dollars in political donations from a PAC run by Clinton confidante Terry McAuliffe to FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s wife, who unsuccessfully ran for the Virginia state senate as a Democrat last year. McCabe headed the aborted investigation into the foundation on whose board McAuliffe once sat.

While Kallstrom calls FBI director James Comey “a good guy” caught between “a rock and a hard place” in investigating alleged malfeasance of a major party presidential nominee in an election year, he faults McCabe’s judgment in overseeing an investigation into his wife’s primary political benefactor. “The guy has no common sense,” Kallstrom explains. “He should be demoted and taken out of the chain of command.”

The Wall Street Journal reporting showed contradictory information regarding McCabe’s handling of the investigation. On the one hand, a source told the newspaper that the shutdown of the Clinton Foundation investigation came from McCabe’s order. The paper also reported that some described McCabe as frustrated by the resistance from the Justice Department regarding the investigation.

Alleged wrongdoing at the Clinton Foundation focuses on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton trading access for donations and the Clintons using the charity to essentially donate to themselves indirectly through various forms of self-dealing.

The Associated Press reported in August that donors to the Clinton Foundation constituted the majority of people outside of government securing meetings, either in person or telephonically, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The 85 donors meeting with Clinton (out of 154 total securing meetings) gave as much as $150 million to the Clinton Foundation. Peter Schweizer’s book Clinton Cash depicts an incestuous relationship between the nonprofit and the profits of Bill and Hillary Clinton. The doing-well-by-doing-good charity, for instance, stepped in to aid Haiti after an earthquake only to witness Clinton lackeys, including the Democratic presidential nominee’s brother, receiving lucrative government contracts. Longtime foundation hand Doug Band, who told John Podesta of more than $100 million in compensation and future contracts he secured for President Bill Clinton in connection to the foundation, fretted over the impact possible exposure of the Clintons’ dealings would have on his consulting group. “I’m also starting to worry that if this story gets out,” Band told Podesta and Cheryl Mills, “we are screwed.”

While Band’s private business may suffer public relations issues from the release of his emails through WikiLeaks, Clinton Inc. does not appear “screwed” with a Justice Department forbidding an FBI investigation let alone indictments.

Kallstrom says that although some agents leaked information regarding Clinton investigations in response to the Justice Department plugging up information, the prospect of convincing any agent to go on the record remains a nonstarter because of career repercussions and a general distrust of protections offered by whistleblower statutes or Congress. For now, former officials at the bureau, including onetime assistant director Kallstrom, address unrest among rank-and-file agents. Kallstrom describes agents as angry at attempts by the administration to impede their investigation into one of its most high-profile former members.

“It was killed in the womb,” Kallstrom explains. “Do you think the attorney general of the United States would allow an investigation of the Clinton Foundation?”