Newly revealed documents and interviews with former Justice Department officials indicate that the investigation into the Clinton Foundation, focused on its interactions with foreign donors during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, remained open for the majority of President Donald Trump’s administration.
The case was eventually closed just days before Trump left office, as detailed in closing documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the New York Times reported on Monday.
The investigation, which had been a subject of intense scrutiny and campaign promises by Trump to “lock her up,” continued despite FBI agents and prosecutors leading it to a dead end. The prolonged investigation became a rallying cry for Republicans who anticipated finding evidence of corruption that would harm Clinton’s political prospects.
The scrutiny of the Clinton Foundation began in 2015 after the publication of “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich” by conservative author Peter Schweizer. The book examined donations made by foreign entities to the foundation. Republicans accused Clinton of engaging in a quid pro quo by supporting the sale of Uranium One, a Canadian company connected to mining interests in the United States, to a Russian nuclear agency in exchange for substantial donations to the foundation.
The FBI initiated a preliminary investigation based on the book’s claims in 2016, but it relied on unverified hearsay information. Additional investigations were launched by the FBI in New York and Little Rock, Arkansas, based on confidential source reporting. However, the Justice Department expressed doubts about the validity of the investigations, causing frustration among FBI agents. Some prosecutors even believed that Schweizer’s book had been discredited.
The tension between the FBI and the Justice Department over the handling of the Clinton Foundation investigation had significant consequences. It led to public disputes and contributed to the dismissal of Andrew G. McCabe, the FBI’s deputy director, who was accused of leaking information about the case and subsequently lying about it. Efforts by the Justice Department to prosecute McCabe were unsuccessful.
The case was eventually consolidated under the supervision of agents in New York in August 2016, but prosecutors declined to issue subpoenas. The investigation appeared to be dormant until it was moved to Little Rock. In 2018, prosecutors obtained a subpoena for the foundation and interviewed its former chief financial officer. The case was eventually closed in January 2021 by career prosecutors in Little Rock, and the FBI received a declination memo in August 2021, signifying the end of the matter.
“All of the evidence obtained during the course of this investigation has been returned or otherwise destroyed,” the FBI said in the memo.
Tom Fitton, the President of Judicial Watch, reacted to the NY Times’ revelations.
“Biden Justice Department formally shut down Clinton Foundation ‘investigation’ in August, 2021,” Fitton remarked. “FBI destroyed all evidence.”
The recently released Durham Report revealed that before the 2016 election, FBI officials frequently intervened to prevent agents from investigating potential criminal actions related to Hillary Clinton, her campaign, and the Clinton Foundation.
“The speed and manner in which the FBI opened and investigated Crossfire Hurricane during the presidential election season based on raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence also reflected a noticeable departure from how it approached prior matters involving possible attempted foreign election interference plans aimed at the Clinton campaign,” the report said.
“[I]n the eighteen months leading up to the 2016 election, the FBI was required to deal with a number of proposed investigations that had the potential of affecting the election,” the report continued. “In each of those instances, the FBI moved with considerable caution. In one such matter… FBI Headquarters and Department officials required defensive briefings to be provided to Clinton and other officials or candidates who appeared to be the targets of foreign interference. In another, the FBI elected to end an investigation after one of its longtime and valuable CHSs went beyond what was authorized and made an improper and possibly illegal financial contribution to the Clinton campaign on behalf of a foreign entity
as a precursor to a much larger donation being contemplated.”
“And in a third, the Clinton Foundation matter, both senior FBI and Department officials placed restrictions on how those matters were to be handled such that essentially no investigative activities occurred for months leading up to the election,” the report added. “These examples are also markedly different from the FBI’ s actions with respect to other highly significant intelligence it received from a trusted foreign source pointing to a Clinton campaign plan to vilify Trump by tying him to Vladimir Putin so as to divert attention from her own concerns relating to her use of a private email server.”
This new report confirms that the FBI’s unwillingness to investigate Hillary Clinton, and the Dept. of Justice’s unwillingness to prosecute her, continues under the Biden administration.
Yeah
NO SCHIFF!!!
WE ALL KNOW THAT, when will something be done about it???
When the people take up weapons & do it themselves obviously!!! Amen
There needs to be a complete house cleaning. All these bureaucrats have become like barnacles in the government. They are only getting worse.