Several interesting threads seem to be coming together this weekend.
Thanks to the efforts of The Hill, the Uranium One scandal came back to light. Charles Grassley is putting pressure on Justice to investigate the Clinton’s criminal enterprise. President Trump, himself, took up the call on Thursday.
The FBI, now under new leadership, seems intent on building bridges to Congress. The Comey-run FBI seems, more and more each day, to have been an adjunct of the Democrat party. It tried to prevent Congressional knowledge of the Uranium One investigation by tying one witness up in a non-disclosure agreement that put his very liberty in jeopardy if he violated it and it had stonewalled Congressional demands for key documents. A week ago, the FBI removed the NDA. Yesterday afternoon, the FBI delivered documents to Congress concerning the decisionmaking process, to the extent that there was one other than “we can’t indict Hillary Clinton,” that led to the FBI decision to not prosecute anyone for stealing and slinging about the Internet national security information.
The FBI has begun turning over to Senate investigators hundreds of pages of memos regarding the bureau’s probe into Hillary Clinton’s private email server, sources told The Hill.
The sources said the Justice Department notified the Senate Judiciary Committee late Friday and the FBI began transmitting memos soon after to assist Congress in its review of former Director James Comey’s handling of the Clinton email case.
The memos detail how and when the bureau’s leadership declined to pursue criminal charges against Clinton for transmitting classified information on her private email server as secretary of State, an investigation that has remained controversial since the 2016 presidential campaigns.
FBI officials declined to comment. “We don’t have any information for you,” spokeswoman Carol Cratty told The Hill.
The Senate committee has been seeking the memos for some time as it investigates whether Comey chose to absolve Clinton of criminal liability before the election-year probe was complete and before she was even interviewed. Comey ultimately concluded that while Clinton’ handling of classified emails was careless, there was not enough evidence of intent to warrant criminal charges.
A lawsuit by Judicial Watch may help explain the FBI’s actions. Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was conflicted out the wazoo in the Clinton investigation and in any investigation concerning the Democrat party, kept himself firmly in charge of the Hillary Clinton investigation until Novemeber 1, 2016, despite being under investigation for a rather open and notorious violation of the Hatch Act:
Judicial Watch today released Justice Department records showing that FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe did not recuse himself from the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s unsecure, non-government email server until Tuesday, November 1, 2016, one week prior to the presidential election. The Clinton email probe was codenamed “Midyear Exam.”
While working as Assistant Director in Charge of the Washington Field Office, McCabe controlled resources supporting the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email scandal. An October 2016 internal FBI memorandum labeled “Overview of Deputy Director McCabe’s Recusal Related To Dr. McCabe’s Campaign for Political Office,” details talking points about McCabe’s various potential conflicts of interest, including the FBI’s investigation of Clinton’s illicit server, which officially began in July 2015:
…
The Overview attempts to deflect concerns regarding the timing of the announcement of Mrs. McCabe’s candidacy in mid-March 2015, fast on the heels of Clinton’s illicit server becoming public knowledge.
The news that Clinton used a private email server broke March 2, 2015. Five days later, former Clinton Foundation board member and Democrat party fundraiser, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe met with the McCabes to recruit her for a run for the state Senate. She announced her candidacy on March 12. Soon afterward, McAuliffe-aligned political groups donated nearly $700,000 (40% of the campaign’s total funds) to McCabe’s wife for her campaign. Around that time, Gov. McAuliffe would also come under criminal investigation by the FBI.
Hopefully, this is all a sign that McCabe is being pushed toward the exit.
The final piece comes in the form of a rather shrill tweet by former acting Attorney General Sally Yates:
DOJ not a tool for POTUS to use to go after his enemies and protect his friends. Respect rule of law and DOJ professionals. This must stop.
— Sally Yates (@SallyQYates) November 4, 2017
That really isn’t what’s happening here, Sally. What is happening is that the president has seen a fairly exhaustive bit of investigative journalism that strongly implies a lot of bribery and self-dealing took place to the detriment of the United States while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State. As the head of the executive branch (you can look this up if you have doubts) there is nothing wrong with him expressing a desire that Department of Justice should get off its ass and look at it. He is Jeff Sessions’s boss and bosses get to do that. In fact, Clinton, if she is innocent, should be in the forefront of demanding an inquiry so her name can be cleared. The legendary Justice Department independence and its famed protocols preventing the White House from directing an investigation are a) not really relevant and b) only exist so long as they exist. Those protocols are not based on law or even and executive order but reflect a preference of someone who held the office of Attorney General at some point in the past. In fact, not even that far in the past.
What is very clear is that the institutional wall that was protecting the Clintons is crumbling and a lot of people know it. Yates’s tweet will inevitably signal a deluge of op-eds about any investigation being “tainted.” Who cares? Tearing down the Clinton enterprise is a worthy undertaking.
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