An ex-intelligence watchdog says that from the very start of the Clinton email investigation, Hillary Clinton’s campaign coordinated with the State Department and Democrats on Capitol Hill to push back against him with threats and intimidation.
“There was personal blowback. Personal blowback to me, to my family, to my office,” General Charles McCullough III, former inspector general for the intelligence community, told Fox News’ Catherine Herridge on Monday.
McCullough was back on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight on Tuesday to provide further details about Hillary and her Democrat allies’ coordinated campaign to thwart his investigation.
“Literally from minute number one, whether it was certain officials at the State Department, or whether it was the Clinton campaign, or whether it was certain folks on the Hill, it was nothing but contention and adversarial posture and fighting,” the former IG told Carlson.
“You were acting as the inspector general,” Carlson noted. “You’re supposed to have some independence here. Again, you’re a career government employee and former FBI agent — why would the Clinton campaign have anything to do with this conversation?” he asked.
“They shouldn’t have!” McCullough answered, adding, “I’m well aware there was strategic coordination between the campaign… certain officials in the State Department, certain law firms in town, and people on Capitol Hill.”
Carlson asked, “Is it legal for a government agency to coordinate with a political campaign?”
“There are rules and authorities that apply and people have been looking at those,” McCullough replied, adding that he didn’t know if anything had been done about it since he had left government in March of this year.
He told Carlson that he was surprised by the response from Democrats to his whistleblowing.
“I expected to be embraced and protected,” he said, “and I didn’t get that.”
He recalled a conversation he had with a staff director on the Hill at some point in 2016.
“He chided me for not considering the political consequences of what I was doing,” he said. “I said, ‘I’m an inspector general! That’s my job — is not to consider the political consequences!'”
“Political considerations by definition should have no bearing on this, correct?” Tucker asked.
“Absolutely not! Not for an IG,” McCullough exclaimed. “As an IG, you’re not a ‘D’, you’re not an ‘R’ — you’re an ‘I’. You’re an IG.” He said that the Democrats settled on a narrative that he was just a pawn of the right and attacked the messenger.
Carlson summed up what happened very nicely, saying that “you in effect heard complaints from the intelligence agencies. Their information was residing on an unsecure server. They were upset about it. You bring these concerns to the Congress and you’re dismissed as a right-wing plant.”
“Absolutely,” McCullough agreed. He added that when he and others in the intelligence community first heard that there was an unsecure server, they looked at each other and said, “Who does that?”
“It was a scandal then, it’s a scandal now,” Tucker concluded.
The president weighed in on the Fox News reports on Twitter Tuesday evening, asking why “our deep-state authorities” aren’t looking into this.
Charles McCullough, the respected fmr Intel Comm Inspector General, said public was misled on Crooked Hillary Emails. “Emails endangered National Security.” Why aren’t our deep State authorities looking at this? Rigged & corrupt? @TuckerCarlson @seanhannity
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 29, 2017
Meanwhile, House conservatives last week called for “a full review by the Judiciary Committee of the processes and procedures that potentially gave Hillary Clinton a different process and a different standard of justice than would be applied to any other American.”
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