The FBI has obtained secretly recorded conversations regarding corrupt deals brokered by the Clintons, but Justice Department officials chalked it up as merely political gossip.
The FBI investigators believed the audio was worth investigating anyway, and they grew increasingly frustrated by the roadblocks set up by the Justice Department, the Wall Street Journal is reporting.
Prosecutors at the DOJ felt the case wasn’t worth bringing to a grand jury because the individual in the secret recording wasn’t working inside the Clinton Foundation.
The FBI’s deputy director, Andrew McCabe, and U.S. Attorney Robert Capers were both at the center of the intra-agency dispute, WSJ reports:
Amid the internal finger-pointing on the Clinton Foundation matter, some have blamed the FBI’s No. 2 official, deputy director Andrew McCabe, claiming he sought to stop agents from pursuing the case this summer. His defenders deny that, and say it was the Justice Department that kept pushing back on the investigation.
At times, people on both sides of the dispute thought Mr. Capers agreed with them. Defenders of Mr. Capers said he was straightforward and always told people he thought the case wasn’t strong.
Apparently, the disagreement and infighting within the FBI got so bad that a Justice official called McCabe to report that agents were “disregarding or disobeying their instructions.”
The Clinton Foundation reportedly came under FBI scrutiny after Peter Schweitzer published his book, “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich.” The author was subsequently interviewed by the FBI.
Another Fox News report suggested FBI agents are now “actively and aggressively pursuing” the Clinton Foundation case. Two separate sources told Fox News the case is now “very high priority.”
“There is an avalanche of new information coming in every day,” one of the sources said.
Fox News’ Bret Baier reported on the air Wednesday that the sources believe an indictment connected to the case could be likely.
There are five important takeaways from the Fox News report:
1. The Clinton Foundation investigation is far more expansive than anybody has reported so far and has been going on for more than a year.
2. The laptops of Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson have not been destroyed, and agents are currently combing through them. The investigation has interviewed several people twice, and plans to interview some for a third time.
3. Agents have found emails believed to have originated on Hillary Clinton’s secret server on Anthony Weiner’s laptop. They say the emails are not duplicates and could potentially be classified in nature.
4. Sources within the FBI have told him that an indictment is “likely” in the case of pay-for-play at the Clinton Foundation, “barring some obstruction in some way” from the Justice Department.
5. FBI sources say with 99% accuracy that Hillary Clinton’s server has been hacked by at least five foreign intelligence agencies, and that information had been taken from it.
H/T: IJR
