The FBI investigation into Bernie and Jane Sanders is accelerating by the day, and new reporting confirms that federal prosecutors have been presenting evidence to a grand jury for months.

Team Sanders is doubling down on their baseless claim that the investigation is politically motivated – an investigation that was started by President Obama’s Justice Department and is being led by a federal prosecutor who has served in Vermont for nearly three decades.

And if his day weren’t already bad enough, NBC’s Alex Seitz-Wald reports that Bernie will face his first primary in over a decade, with his challenger smelling blood in the water over the growing FBI investigation.

Federal prosecutors step up probe of land deal pushed by wife of Bernie Sanders

The Washington Post

Shawn Boburg, Jack Gillum

July 10, 2017

http://wapo.st/2sXdt2M

A federal investigation into a land deal led by Jane Sanders, the wife and political adviser of Sen. Bernie Sanders, has accelerated in recent months — with prosecutors hauling off more than a dozen boxes of records from the Vermont college she once ran and calling a state official to testify before a grand jury, according to interviews and documents.

A half-dozen people said in interviews in recent days that they had been contacted by the FBI or federal prosecutors, and former college trustees told The Washington Post that lawyers representing Jane Sanders had interviewed them to learn what potential witnesses might tell the government.

…

A spokesman for the couple, Jeff Weaver, denied wrongdoing late last week. Weaver told The Post the couple hired a D.C. law firm this spring because they allege President Trump’s Justice Department could use the investigation as a way to derail a potential 2020 challenger.

“While the Obama administration was in office, I don’t think anyone thought that these baseless allegations warranted hiring a lawyer,” Weaver said. “But with Trump and [Attorney General] Jeff Sessions at the helm, that’s a very different situation.”

The investigation began in early 2016 after Brady Toensing, a lawyer who was the state chairman for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, wrote to the U.S. attorney and federal bank regulators, alleging potential bank fraud. FBI agents conducted interviews last year, but the probe was not publicly confirmed until this April, when the local news outlet VTDigger.org reported that a federal prosecutor had asked that records from the college be preserved.

Last week, an attorney for the Vermont Educational and Health Buildings Financing Agency, which helped the college get financing, told The Post that its executive director was asked to testify before a grand jury in April. That is the first public confirmation that prosecutors have sought to present evidence to a grand jury.

…

Weaver suggested that Bernie Sanders has been targeted by the GOP because he’s a popular politician who could challenge Trump for the presidency in three years. Weaver said the allegation is “right out of the Benghazi playbook.”

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Federal prosecutors visited the state offices in April and carried out 20 to 30 boxes of the school’s business records, said Molly Bachman, general counsel for the education agency.

Also in April, the Vermont Educational and Health Buildings Financing Agency received a subpoena for records related to the land deal and all fundraising efforts, pledges and donations, according to a copy of the subpoena The Post obtained through a public records request. It is titled “grand jury investigation” and directs the bonding agency to contact a special agent with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, a banking regulator. The FDIC sometimes helps federal prosecutors in investigations that involve banking.

James C. Foley Jr., a lawyer for the bonding agency, said that prosecutors also issued a subpoena directing Executive Director Robert Giroux to testify before a grand jury that same month. Foley said he convinced prosecutors that Giroux would not be able to provide information beyond the 900 pages of documents the agency had supplied to the U.S. attorney’s office.

In recent weeks, lawyers for Sanders have called at least three former trustees trying to learn more about the investigation, those people said. Two said they were contacted by lawyers with a Burlington firm.

“I didn’t provide any answers,” Dantzscher said.

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