Lynch was required under law to disqualify herself. Under the Code of Federal Regulations, 28 CFR 45.2, “no employee shall participate in a criminal investigation or prosecution he (or she) has a personal or political relationship with any person or organization substantially involved in the conduct that is the subject of the investigation or prosecution.”47 Lynch had both a personal and professional relationship with Bill and Hillary Clinton. The private tarmac meeting underscored their close personal connection, and Bill’s selection of Lynch for a high-ranking position at the Justice Department is evidence of their professional association.
The Democratic-led Justice Department’s objectivity and independence were already being questioned when the meeting occurred. But we are supposed to believe the Lynch-Clinton encounter was just an innocent coincidence of a casual, social nature. Why, then, did the FBI on the scene instruct everyone that “no photos, no pictures, no cell phones” could be used to capture what took place?48
When the confab became public, the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) requested any and all records of the meeting and were told by the FBI that “No records responsive to your request were located.”49 A year later, the DOJ produced more than four hundred pages of emails, although the contents of what Lynch and Clinton discussed were heavily redacted. The emails do reveal that reporters for the New York Times and the Washington Post seemed inclined to minimize the matter as an innocuous nonstory and reached out to Justice Department officials to reinforce that view.50
Comey, for his part, told Congress almost a year later that he became suspicious of Lynch’s motives and lost faith in the Justice Department’s investigation following the tarmac encounter. This, he said, became his justification for deciding, on his own, to assume prosecutorial authority over the probe, although the evidence shows he had already taken steps to assume command even before the meeting.
Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 3, 2017, Comey made a cryptic statement about impropriety at the Department of Justice:
A number of things had gone on which I can’t talk about yet, that made me worry that the department leadership could not credibly complete the investigation and decline prosecution without grievous damage to the American people’s confidence in the justice system.51
Comey was asked in the hearing about an email that reportedly provided assurances that Lynch would protect Clinton by making sure the FBI investigation “didn’t go too far.” The director responded, “That’s not a question I can answer in this forum . . . because it would call for a classified response. I have briefed leadership of the intelligence committees on that particular issue, but I can’t talk about it here.”52 It is doubtful that his response would involve anything classified. It appeared to be an excuse to keep the matter hidden, as it remains.
A month later, Comey raised even more suspicions about Lynch and potential impropriety when he told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the then-attorney general had instructed him to mislead the public about the true nature of the Clinton investigation. Comey testified, “The Attorney General had directed me not to call it an investigation, but instead to call it a matter, which confused me and concerned me.”53 In follow-up questions, Comey said Lynch’s request “concerned me because that language tracked with how the (Clinton) campaign was talking about how the FBI was doing its work.”54 In Comey’s mind, Lynch was not evaluating the law and facts objectively, as was her duty. Instead, she was actively attempting to help Clinton beat the rap.
Comey’s self-serving explanations for recommending that Clinton not be prosecuted were contrary to the law and raised more questions than answers. If he believed that Lynch was biased and determined to protect Clinton, why didn’t he take more aggressive action to expose it? He should have immediately notified leaders of Congress or the Justice Department’s inspector general. He did neither, choosing to remain silent. If he felt that there was corruption born of a conflict of interest and nothing was being done to correct it, he should have resigned his post and exposed his suspicions to the public. Comey’s failure to act suggests he had his reasons for commandeering complete authority over the Clinton case in order to accomplish the outcome he had already predetermined in her favor.
Former U.S. Attorney Joe diGenova, who also served as an independent counsel, surmised that Comey and Lynch were motivated by a desire to see Clinton become president:
What Comey and Lynch did was to corrupt the statute to save Clinton. Everything that Comey said at the news conference was false. Clinton had clearly violated the Espionage Act. There just isn’t any doubt about that. For him to say that no reasonable prosecutor would bring the case was ludicrous because reasonable prosecutors have been bringing cases over far less than that for years. Comey knew that. He became an embarrassment that day because everything he said was false. And he did it for one reason, to help Clinton become president.55
Comey’s Decision Angered FBI Agents
FBI director Comey’s decision to let Hillary Clinton off the hook proved to be an extremely unpopular one within the bureau. A senior FBI official close to the investigation told Fox News that “career agents and attorneys on the case unanimously believed the Democratic presidential nominee should have been charged” and the decision “left members of the investigative team dismayed and disgusted.”56 The October 13, 2016, story revealed that more than one hundred FBI agents and analysts developed the evidence, along with six attorneys from the Justice Department’s national security division, counterespionage section, who reviewed what laws Clinton broke.
“No trial level attorney agreed, no agent working the case agreed, with the decision not to prosecute—it was a top-down decision” to decline to bring charges against Clinton, the insider confided. In other words, Comey and several of his top aides, perhaps in collaboration with the DOJ, chose not to pursue an indictment. “It is safe to say the vast majority felt she should be prosecuted,” said the source. “We were floored while listening to the FBI briefing because Comey laid it all out, and then said, ‘but we are doing nothing,’ which made no sense to us.”57
It was especially confounding because a grand jury was never fully utilized, nor was there any indication that search warrants were issued. All of this would be customary in a case involving potential national security breaches caused by the mishandling of classified information. These departures from normal procedure were obvious red flags and deeply alarming to the agents who were working the case. Thus, the entire process seemed distorted and illegitimate from the outset, as if the investigation was nothing more than a subterfuge designed to cover up illegality.
A story from Fox News also pointed out a strange and suspicious twist:
Another oddity was the five so-called immunity agreements granted to Clinton’s State Department aides and IT experts. Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s former chief of staff, along with two other State Department staffers, John Bentel and Heather Samuelson, were afforded immunity agreements, as was Bryan Pagliano, Clinton’s former IT aide, and Paul Combetta, an employee of Platte River networks, the firm hired to manage her server after she left the State Department.
As Fox News has reported, Combetta utilized the computer program Bleachbit to destroy Clinton’s records, despite an order from Congress to preserve them, and Samuelson also destroyed Clinton’s emails. Pagliano established the system that illegally transferred classified and top-secret information to Clinton’s private server. Mills disclosed classified information to the Clinton’s family foundation in the process, breaking federal laws.58
Why were these five people given immunity from prosecution? In almost every criminal case, immunity is only granted after a witness delivers a “proffer” (an offer of proof or evidence) that incriminates someone else and precipitates criminal charges. Yet no one, Clinton included, was ever prosecuted.
The prospect of a Comey cover-up was further fueled by the inexplicable actions of the FBI when it reportedly destroyed the laptops of Samuels
on and Mills after they received immunity. Why would the FBI erase or demolish computers with classified information contained therein? It appears the Bureau itself committed crimes by destroying evidence relevant to its own criminal investigation.
But there’s more. According to the senior FBI source, “Mills was allowed to sit in on the interview of Clinton as her lawyer. That’s absurd. Someone who is supposedly cooperating against the target of an investigation (being) permitted to sit by the target as counsel violates any semblance of ethical responsibility.”59
Indeed, it does.
Samuelson, a lawyer, was also permitted to be present when Clinton testified. It was not only irregular, but highly improper, unethical, and probably illegal. Under 18 U.S.C. 207, it is against the law for former government officials, like Mills and Samuelson, to “knowingly make, with the intent to influence, any communication before any officer or employee of any department or agency of the U.S. in connection with a particular matter” they were once personally involved as government employees.60
It seems that there was never any serious possibility that Clinton would be charged for anything she might admit to in her July 2, 2016 interview. Otherwise, the FBI would not have allowed two immunized witnesses central to the prosecution’s case to sit in the same room to hear her testimony. It is unheard of for prosecutors to permit such a thing because it would give those witnesses a chance to conform their testimony in such a way as to support the subject of the investigation, Clinton. During questioning before the House Judiciary Committee, Comey appeared to concede this point.
It was bad enough that the immunity deals called for the FBI to destroy the laptops of Mills and Samuelson, thereby obliterating valuable proof that Clinton may have destroyed evidence in purging her server. But it was far worse for the FBI to treat Mills and Samuelson as suspects, accomplices, witnesses, and defense lawyers all at the same time and in the same case. By condoning unethical behavior, the bureau simultaneously compromised the integrity and effectiveness of its own criminal probe. Of course, the FBI knew that. Somehow, they didn’t seem to care. There was no stopping “the fix” once it was well under way.
FBI agents were also angry that Clinton was interviewed for only three and a half hours on July 2.61 She reportedly answered, “I do not recall” or “I don’t remember” some thirty-nine times.62 At no point was she placed under oath. Comey cleared her of any wrongdoing three days later. “Every agent and attorney I have spoken to is embarrassed and has lost respect for James Comey and Loretta Lynch,” the senior source told Fox News. “The bar for DOJ is whether the evidence supports a case for charges—it did here. It should have been taken to a grand jury.”63
Several former FBI agents ventured damning assessments of both Clinton and Comey to Paul Sperry of the New York Post. Dennis V. Hughes, the first chief of the FBI’s computer investigations unit, stated, “The FBI has politicized itself, and its reputation will suffer for a long time. I hold Director Comey responsible.”64
Former FBI official I. C. Smith, who served as section chief in the National Security Division, observed, “Clearly there was a different standard applied to Clinton. What she did is absolutely abhorrent for anyone who has access to classified information.”65
Retired agent Michael M. Biasello said, “Comey has singlehandedly ruined the reputation of the FBI.” Biasello claimed the outcome was predetermined “by design” and called Comey’s decision “cowardly.”66
When a decision makes no sense, it is reasonable to search for an alternative explanation or underlying reason that frequently exposes the sequestered truth.
That explanation came into focus when the inspector general of the Department of Justice, Michael Horowitz, decided to investigate Comey’s mystifying decision. In the process, the IG uncovered the actions of a key FBI investigator by the name of Peter Strzok. And the name of FBI lawyer Lisa Page also emerged. Text messages exchanged between them led to the identities of others, including FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, who appeared to have had personal and political motives to clear Clinton.
Chapter 3
“The Fix”
Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it. Where law ends, there tyranny begins.
—WILLIAM PITT, PRIME MINISTER OF GREAT BRITAIN, JANUARY 9, 1770
Very little was known about how FBI director James Comey reached his decision not to pursue criminal charges against Hillary Clinton.
Other than his public statement absolving her, nothing was revealed about the actions taken by agents and lawyers within the FBI who were intimately involved in the investigation and helped shape its improbable outcome. The Clinton exoneration statement and its evolution from criminality to absolution was a closely guarded secret within the agency. Americans were kept in the dark. So, too, was Congress.
Why did Comey initially find that Clinton was “grossly negligent” in violation of the law, but then alter the critical language to clear her of wrongdoing? How could that have even happened before any of the principal witnesses, including Clinton, were interviewed? It was puzzling, suspicious, and counterintuitive to the law. Had one or more individuals at the FBI put their thumb on the scales of justice to influence the result?
As troubling questions persisted over the ensuing months, several names began to emerge—Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, and Lisa Page. All three served as top FBI officials and were instrumental in the handling of the Clinton case. Together, they wielded enormous power—including the power to corrupt the process.
Andrew McCabe
During the early stages of the Clinton email investigation, McCabe was the assistant director in charge at the FBI’s Washington field office. He was likely privy to the evidence being developed against Clinton. But in January 2016, nearly six months before Comey cleared Clinton of wrongdoing, he appointed McCabe to serve as deputy director of the FBI.1 McCabe was second in command at the bureau and a close adviser to Comey. As such, he actively assumed oversight of the Clinton case and was intimately involved in the ultimate decision not to bring criminal charges against her. What few people knew at the time was how immersed McCabe had become in the same milieu as the Clintons.
In early 2015, Dr. Jill McCabe, a pediatric physician, was recruited by Democrats to run for the Virginia state senate just five days after Clinton’s private email scandal became public.2 Was this sequence of events a mere coincidence? Dr. McCabe’s campaign coffers were the beneficiary of some $675,000 from groups aligned with Clinton and Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, a longtime friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton and a former board member of the Clinton Global Initiative.3 The timing of the payments is curious. The big dollar donations to McCabe arrived two months after the FBI launched its investigation of Clinton in July 2015.
McAuliffe personally solicited Dr. McCabe to run for office during a meeting that her husband also attended.4 The subsequent cash donations were an unusually extravagant expenditure for a state-wide race and amounted to nearly 40 percent of her total campaign funds.5
The public knew none of this until three months after Clinton was cleared by Comey and his chief deputy, McCabe. The story broke on October 24, 2016, when Devlin Barrett reported it in the Wall Street Journal.6 No one was ever able to prove that Clinton’s fingerprints were on the bags of money, but McAuliffe has never denied that he helped arrange the cash.
Although there was severe criticism of McCabe within the FBI by fellow agents, the bureau officially insisted that he did not begin his management of the email probe until after his wife’s campaign ended, and he only became involved in the case months later when he was promoted to deputy FBI director in January 2016.7 Importantly, documents show that the FBI, knowing of his wife’s cash connections to Clinton, never warned McCabe that he should stay clear of her email case, even after his wife lost her election.8 Instead, he assumed an executive leadership role guiding the Clinton investigation in the critical six months preceding the FBI’s announcement in July 2016 that
she would not be criminally charged.
The FBI’s defense of McCabe was both superficial and misleading. It makes no difference that his wife’s campaign had ended. She still got the money. She was still indebted and beholden to Clinton and her close friend McAuliffe for their financial support of her. And Dr. McCabe’s husband can hardly be described as an indifferent bystander with no interest in the matter. Spouses tend to support one another. That is why ethics advisers at the FBI cautioned him to recuse himself from all public corruption cases during his wife’s senate race.9
The conflict of interest was glaring. But that conflict did not suddenly end at the conclusion of his wife’s campaign. Dr. McCabe took money from political action groups closely associated with the person her husband ended up investigating. Common sense dictates that the McCabes’ gratitude and the corresponding propensity for bias would persist in perpetuity. The decision to clear Clinton may have been influenced by that very bias.
This was a recurring problem throughout the investigation. Everyone involved was from a small circle of professional Washington insiders, who all knew each other well and have for years. It did not matter whether there was a quid pro quo. Surely, it would have been possible to find someone to determine Hillary Clinton’s legal status in a fair and neutral manner.
At the very least, the appearance of impropriety should have been more than enough for McCabe to disassociate himself permanently from the entire criminal investigation of Clinton. Moreover, FBI director James Comey should have demanded it. He did not. The fact that Comey and McCabe declined to do so adds even more suspicion to the theory that “the fix was in” not to prosecute Clinton.
The Russia Hoax Page 5