The Department of Justice is reportedly reopening the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information on a private, unsecure email server.
According to The Daily Beast, investigators will be taking “a fresh look” at the case, specifically “how much classified information was sent over Clinton’s server; who put that information into an unclassified environment, and how; and which investigators knew about these matters and when.”
Republicans on key congressional committees told The Hill earlier this week that they now have secured “written evidence” that the FBI knew Clinton and her staff broke laws, and yet a decision was made at the top to give her “an HQ special.”
That evidence includes passages in FBI documents stating the “sheer volume” of classified information that flowed through Clinton’s insecure emails was proof of criminality as well as an admission of false statements by one key witness in the case, the investigators said.
The name of the witness is redacted from the FBI documents but lawmakers said he was an employee of a computer firm that helped maintain her personal server after she left office as America’s top diplomat and who belatedly admitted he had permanently erased an archive of her messages in 2015 after they had been subpoenaed by Congress.
The investigators also confirmed that the FBI began drafting a statement exonerating Clinton of any crimes while evidence responsive to subpoenas was still outstanding and before agents had interviewed more than a dozen key witnesses.
“Nothing about that investigation was right,” Chris Swecker, former assistant director of the FBI, told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Wednesday night. “Those of us who have conducted federal criminal investigations know that you use the grand jury, you use search warrants, you don’t hand out immunities like candy. I mean — everything in that investigation runs contrary to the way a real, credible and thorough FBI investigation is conducted.”
Swecker added that the FBI doesn’t normally go to witnesses and say “mother, may I?” to obtain information.
.@Chris_Swecker on whether he believes the Hillary email probe was 'political': "I think that there were people inside the Comey inner circle that had their own predetermined opinions about @HillaryClinton & @POTUS…" #Tucker pic.twitter.com/9VASBcwuxs
— Fox News (@FoxNews) January 4, 2018
In keeping with his oft-repeated campaign pledge to prosecute Clinton, President Trump has been putting pressure on the Justice Department to reopen the case.
Many people in our Country are asking what the “Justice” Department is going to do about the fact that totally Crooked Hillary, AFTER receiving a subpoena from the United States Congress, deleted and “acid washed” 33,000 Emails? No justice!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017
More email evidence surfaced last week when conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch won a lawsuit against the State Department and released emails revealing the classified information that was on the laptop of Clinton aide Huma Abedin’s then-husband Anthony Weiner.
A Daily Caller analysis of emails found that “Abedin forwarded sensitive State Department emails, including passwords to government systems, to her personal Yahoo email account before every single Yahoo account was hacked.”
Luke Rosiak of DCNF reported on New Year’s Day:
Abedin, the top aide to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, used her insecure personal email provider to conduct sensitive work. This guarantees that an account with high-level correspondence in Clinton’s State Department was impacted by one or more of a series of breaches — at least one of which was perpetrated by a “state-sponsored actor.”
In response to the bombshell report, Trump again called on the DOJ to act.
Crooked Hillary Clinton’s top aid, Huma Abedin, has been accused of disregarding basic security protocols. She put Classified Passwords into the hands of foreign agents. Remember sailors pictures on submarine? Jail! Deep State Justice Dept must finally act? Also on Comey & others
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018
According to the New York Post’s Paul Sperry, Clinton allowed her Washington, D.C., house cleaner to enter the home’s SCIF (sensitive compartmented information facility) and print out classified material. Diplomatic security agents had set up the secure room so the secretary of state could handle classified materials at her home.
Apparently FBI investigators led by the Trump-hating Peter Strzok never interviewed the maid during the sham investigation.
From within the SCIF, Santos — who had no clearance — “collected documents from the secure facsimile machine for Clinton,” the FBI notes revealed.
Just how sensitive were the papers Santos presumably handled? The FBI noted Clinton periodically received the Presidential Daily Brief — a top-secret document prepared by the CIA and other US intelligence agencies — via the secure fax.
A 2012 “sensitive” but unclassified email from Hanley to Clinton refers to a fax the staff wanted Clinton “to see before your Netanyahu mtg. Marina will grab for you.”
Yet it appears Clinton was never asked by the FBI in its yearlong investigation to turn over the iMac that Santos used to receive the emails, or the printer she used to print out the documents, or the printouts themselves.
REWIND: Hillary directed Abedin to order her uncleared maid in DC to print out & handle classified State materials. Guess what? Lead FBI investigator Peter Strzok never bothered to interview the maid, Marina Santos, a Filipino immigrant. & now we know why!https://t.co/4JCwpYfEHP
— Paul Sperry (@paulsperry_) December 30, 2017
Perhaps the new investigation will give the Santos matter the attention it deserves.
“Clearly, that’s the least they can be doing, is asking some of these questions,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton told the Daily Beast. “I think there’s enough there to re-initiate an investigation.”
“It’s certainly a positive development,” added Fitton. “It’s part of what we’ve been demanding.”
Fitton credited his organization with putting pressure on the Justice Department to act:
And we're pleased to see that our work helped pressure the Sessions Justice Department to at least begin to ask questions about the sham Clinton email investigation by the Comey/Lynch FBI/DOJ under President Obama. @RealDonaldTrump right to demand action! https://t.co/ks5i93CxTh https://t.co/y62SxqoDrK
— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) January 4, 2018
A separate Justice Department inspector general probe into how the FBI handled the Clinton email case is expected to release its findings this spring.
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