October 31, 2016

The FBI's Clinton Investigation Is Wider Than Assumed

The Washington Post editors today added to their hypocrisy with three additional anti-Comey op-eds:

I interpret that as naked fear that their candidate Hillary Clinton may now loose. That fear is justified.

The Wall Street Journal today added to its so far excellent reporting on the Clinton issues by revealing the much bigger story behind it: FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe - Laptop may contain thousands of messages sent to or from Mrs. Clinton’s private server (open copy here).

According to the reporting, based on FBI sources, FBI agents in New York and elsewhere have been looking into the Clinton Foundation for several months. They suspect that this "charity" was selling political favors by then Secretary of State Clinton in exchange for donations that personally benefited the Clinton family.

The Justice Department blocked further aggressive investigations into the issue, allegedly because of the ongoing election. A high FBI official, Andrew McCabe, also showed disinterest in a further pursuit of the issue. McCabe's wife had just tried to get elected as state senator and had receive a campaign donation of nearly $500,000 from Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Clinton friend and at times board member of the Clinton Foundation. The FBI agents pursuing the investigation into the Clinton Foundation were not amused.

The separate investigation into former Congressman Weiner for sexual contacts with minors was looking for pedophile stuff on Weiner's electronic devices. It didn't find any as far as we can tell, but found some 650,000 emails archived on a laptop.

Several thousand of these emails were sent or received by Weiner's spouse, the intimate Clinton aide Huma Abedin. They came through Clinton's private email server. At least some of these thousands of emails are likely copies of those that were deleted from Clinton's server when the (separate) investigation into it started. They may be evidence that Clinton sent and received classified documents through her unsecured system. Some of these emails may also contain serious dirt related to the Clinton Foundation. (It is highly likely that at least some FBI agents know "unofficially" what these emails contain. Legally they could not look at them without a warrant which they only got today.)

Thus we have three ongoing FBI investigations:

into Clinton's private email-server used illegally for official State Department business;

into the Clinton Foundation and its role in peddling political influence in exchange for donations;

into the personal conduct of Anthony Weiner.

Additional investigations that may come up are on:

the mixing of donations to the Clinton Foundation and personal compensation for Bill Clinton for holding highly paid speeches;

for profit activities by the group of people running Bill Clinton's businesses as well as the Clinton Foundation financing;

inappropriate hindering of the FBI investigations by the Justice Department and/or by McCabe.

With such a list of potentially very serious scandals pending it is highly understandable that FBI director Comey went public and did not follow the advice from the Justice Department to pursue these issues only on a reduced level. It would have been political suicide to try to keep this silent. Way too many FBI agents eager to pursue these case were in the known and would have talked, as they do now, to the media.

If Clinton gets elected she will be hampered by these scandals for the next two years. The Republicans in Congress will jump on these issues as soon as possible. There will be endless hearings with large media coverage. The only question is when the first attempts at an impeachment process will be made - before or after she moves back into the White House. She and her family may be better off with her losing the campaign.

Posted by b on October 31, 2016 at 19:19 UTC | Permalink

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