Smoke Always Leads to the Fire as FBI Revelations Prove Clinton Was Protected by the Obama DOJ

Commentary

Where there is the thick smoke of corruption there is always fire, and the source of the fire within the anti-Trump halls of justice in Washington just got more evident.

The disgraced FBI agents who helped launch the witch hunt against President Donald Trump have shed disturbing new light on the corrupt mishandling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, exposing the urgent need for a second special counsel investigation.

Robert Mueller has spent nearly two years and more than $25 million taxpayer dollars searching for evidence of a crime that never took place based on the disingenuous machinations of political partisans within the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ). Yet, when Hillary Clinton jeopardized national security by sending and receiving classified materials on a private, unsecured email server, the DOJ went out of its way to ignore evidence that should have led to the filing of criminal charges.

The double standard was revealed by recently-released transcripts of closed-door congressional testimony from Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, and it demonstrates the serious need for a comprehensive investigation of its own. The American people deserve to know how political pressure was allowed to influence federal law enforcement activities, and what the DOJ and FBI will do differently in the future to prevent partisan bureaucrats from abusing their powers in this way.

Remember, the special counsel investigation of alleged Russian collusion started with an unverified dossier commissioned by political consultants on the payroll of Clinton’s campaign. After obtaining the “Steele dossier,” FBI agents concealed its political origins to trick the FISA court into using it as the basis for approving surveillance of affiliates of the Trump campaign.

Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. (JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images)

The obfuscation by career agents is particularly infuriating because it exploited the secrecy of a court that was established to protect America’s national security, which authorized a warrant for the federal government to spy on an opposition party’s campaign.

To date, no one has been charged for any of these actions.

In fact, many of the same officials who deliberately concealed relevant facts from the FISA court—that the dossier was unverified; who paid for it; that the author, Christopher Steele, was desperate to see Trump lose the election; or that Steele had previously been fired by the FBI—are still running the show at the highest levels of federal law enforcement to this day.

Their job security sustained a major blow, however, with the release of the transcripts of the closed-door House committee interviews of Strzok and Page.

Former FBI lawyer Lisa Page. (ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP/Getty Images)

The most damning revelation came from Page, who confirmed under oath that the Obama DOJ ordered the FBI not to charge Hillary Clinton for gross negligence in the handling of classified information—a blatantly political attempt to bury Clinton’s email scandal before the 2016 election.

The transcript from Strzok’s private interview indicated that the DOJ also took steps to bury evidence of Clinton’s wrongdoing. According to Strzok, the DOJ “negotiated” an agreement with Hillary Clinton’s legal team that prevented the FBI from accessing emails on her private servers relating to the Clinton Foundation.

The New York Times reported in 2015 about allegations that then-Secretary of State Clinton accepted donations to her foundation from Russia in exchange for a favorable ruling from the U.S. government on the Uranium One deal, which gave Russia a massive stake in uranium production. Since then, additional sleuthing has provided even more evidence that Clinton illegally used the foundation as a political slush fund.

At long last, we may finally be on the verge of getting an honest investigation into the extremely serious allegations against Hillary Clinton.

Former FBI agent Peter Strzok. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

In response to the revelations made by Strzok and Page, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has called for the appointment of a second special counsel to investigate “potential crimes” related to the DOJ’s handling of the Clinton investigation, saying that two questions need to be answered: Did DOJ officials stop the Clinton investigation in an effort to help her win the 2016 election? And did they start the Russian investigation against Trump as an insurance policy in case he won?

Graham is right. The American people deserve to know whether we can trust those responsible for upholding the rule of law, and the only way to make that determination is through a comprehensive, independent investigation by a second special counsel.

If we are ultimately able to put out the fire of federal investigative corruption that is evidenced from the Obama DOJ and FBI, we must first acknowledge there is smoke, lots of it, and from which camp it’s coming.

Joseph diGenova is an American attorney who served as the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia from 1983 to 1988.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.