To Err Is Huma The FBI investigates the Clintons. They attack the FBI. By James Taranto
http://www.wsj.com/articles/to-err-is-huma-1477936068
Partisans of Hillary Clinton insist the public has too much information about the FBI’s various inquiries into the Democratic presidential nominee and her associates. On its face, that claim seems reasonable. After all, Anthony Weiner is involved.
On Friday we learned, from director James Comey’s letter to Congress, that the FBI is once again investigating Mrs. Clinton’s illicit private email server. Two days later (and also in today’s print edition) The Wall Street Journal published a thorough report by Devlin Barrett revealing that for months the bureau has also been investigating the Clinton Foundation, “to see if there was evidence of financial crimes or influence-peddling.” That probe has met with resistance from Loretta Lynch’s Justice Department.
Abedin, who uses her maiden name (can you blame her?), had an account on Mrs. Clinton’s private server. According to the Times, FBI agents on the Weiner case found emails “pertinent” to the server investigation on a device Weiner and Abedin had shared. The Journal’s Barrett reports the Weiner laptop contained 650,000 emails.
That’s a gross figure, in more ways than one, but “underlying metadata suggests thousands of those messages could have been sent to or from the private server that Mrs. Clinton used while she was secretary of state.” Agents couldn’t tell for sure because their warrant covered only the Weiner investigation. Over the weekend, the Washington Post reports, they obtained an additional warrant to look for material relevant to the server investigation.
The Post notes that “an announcement from the FBI in early October, when the emails were discovered, might have been less politically damaging for Clinton than one coming less than two weeks before the Nov. 8 election.” That didn’t happen, it appears, because Comey wasn’t briefed on the find until last week.
According to the Journal, early this month “New York-based FBI officials notified Andrew McCabe, the bureau’s second-in-command. . . . Mr. McCabe then instructed the email investigators to talk to the Weiner investigators and see whether the laptop’s contents could be relevant to the Clinton email probe.” Comey was told only after that determination.
McCabe, “a longtime FBI official,” has family political ties to the Clintons:
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Mr. McCabe’s wife, Jill McCabe, received $467,500 in campaign funds in late 2015 from the political-action committee of Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a longtime ally of the Clintons and, until he was elected governor in November 2013, a Clinton Foundation board member. . . .
Mr. McAuliffe has been under investigation for months by the FBI’s Washington field office, a probe that includes an examination of donations made on behalf of a Chinese businessman, according to people familiar with the matter. His lawyers have denied any wrongdoing.
On the Clinton Foundation matter, the Journal reports, FBI agents were at odds with the Justice Department, with McCabe’s role a matter of dispute:
According to a person familiar with the probes, on Aug. 12, a senior Justice Department official called Mr. McCabe to voice his displeasure at finding that New York FBI agents were still openly pursuing the Clinton Foundation probe during the election season. Mr. McCabe said agents still had the authority to pursue the issue as long as they didn’t use overt methods requiring Justice Department approvals.
The Justice Department official was “very pissed off,” according to one person close to Mr. McCabe, and pressed him to explain why the FBI was still chasing a matter the department considered dormant. Others said the Justice Department was simply trying to make sure FBI agents were following longstanding policy not to make overt investigative moves that could be seen as trying to influence an election. Those rules discourage investigators from making any such moves before a primary or general election, and, at a minimum, checking with anticorruption prosecutors before doing so.
“Are you telling me that I need to shut down a validly predicated investigation?” Mr. McCabe asked, according to people familiar with the conversation. After a pause, the official replied, “Of course not,” these people said. . . .
Others further down the FBI chain of command, however, said agents were given a much starker instruction on the case: “Stand down.” When agents questioned why they weren’t allowed to take more aggressive steps, they said they were told the order had come from the deputy director—Mr. McCabe. CONTINUE AT SITE
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