Congressional investigators have gathered enough evidence to suggest that the FBI, under the Obama administration, ignored a major lead in the Clinton-email probe, according to transcripts of closed-door testimonies of several current and former bureau officials.
The office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General informed the FBI in 2015 that a forensic review of Hillary Clinton’s emails unearthed anomalies in the metadata of the messages. The evidence in the metadata suggested that a copy of every email Hillary Clinton sent during her tenure as the secretary of state was forwarded to a foreign third party.
The existence of the lead was first revealed during the public testimony of Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General Michael Horowitz in June last year. Horowitz acknowledged the existence of the specific lead and said he spoke about it to Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) Charles McCullough. Yet, despite the alarming nature of the referral, Horowitz’s 568-page report on the FBI’s handling the Clinton-email investigation made no mention of the lead or how the bureau handled it. The omission caught the attention of Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), who pressed Horowitz for an explanation. Horowitz said he would get back to the committee with answers.
It’s unclear if Horowitz ever followed up on that promise. Meadows went on to question several current and former FBI officials about the lead, including Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Bill Priestap, Jonathan Moffa, John Giacolone, and James Comey. In all of the interviews, transcripts of which were reviewed for this article, the officials claimed to remember nothing about the specific referral from the ICIG, suggesting that the lead was either suppressed or ignored by investigators.
During questioning, Meadows repeatedly suggested that Strzok, the former FBI official best known for being fired from the agency last year for his anti-Trump text messages, ignored the lead and never followed up with the ICIG regarding the referral. The bureau also didn’t interview anyone from the ICIG’s office, including Frank Rucker, the investigator who initially briefed the FBI team about the anomalies, according to the transcripts.
An official from the ICIG communications office didn’t respond to repeated requests for an interview with Rucker.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee member Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) listens to testimony from Deputy Assistant FBI Director Peter Strzok during a joint hearing of his committee and the House Judiciary Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill July 12, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Meadows summed up what lawmakers have learned about the ICIG lead while questioning Comey on Dec. 17 last year. Comey served as the director of the FBI during the Clinton-email probe. He was one of the last witnesses interviewed by lawmakers shortly before the House judiciary and oversight committees wrapped up their review of actions taken and not taken by the FBI and the DOJ during the 2016 presidential election.
“Well, just to be clear, Mr. McCullough has indicated to Members of Congress that there was zero followup,” Meadows told Comey. “There are allegations they believe were largely ignored by the FBI.”
As some of us have said all along, Hillary’s secret, private, UNSECURED email server was a threat to national security which she traded for the ability to destroy evidence she did not want the government to see or the public to know about via FOIA requests. Liberals, some hereabouts, have denied this reality, but now it is definitively confirmed. Further confirmed is how the very institutions whose job it is to protect the United States chose to cover up and ignore such an abysmally STUPID handling of State Department classified information so as not to damage the chances of this idiot becoming President of the United States!
Yet, Mueller is sending SWAT teams to capture someone that may or may not have made erroneous recollections of statements years old. The wreckage of our justice system is an embarrassment before the rest of the world. It MUST be repaired and that means the people responsible MUST go to jail.
@Deplorable Me: It may be time to disband the FBI and after checking and vetting slip the survivors into maybe the US Marshalls office, expand the duties of that institution. DOJ also needs a serious shake down. If those involved in extra constitutional activities are not brought to justice and made examples of this Republic is doomed. That would include those in Congress that abetted this travesty.
I will not hold my breath, seems some other entity is driving this and those tentacles may never be cut loose.
@kitt: Mainly, liberals need to be banned from government duty. They owe allegiance to their ideology instead of to the nation.