WASHINGTON — The Justice Department’s four-year-long probe into the Clinton Foundation was beset by “conflicts of interest” and obstruction by senior FBI officials, according to whistleblower allegations and records released Monday by Sen. Chuck Grassley.
The whistleblower affidavits, internal emails and other documents reveal that then-FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe and others “obstructed investigative activities” into Hillary and Bill Clinton’s main philanthropic organization, Grassley said in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi laying out the findings.
Two months before the investigation began, in Janaury 2016, McCabe’s wife, Dr. Jill McCabe, had accepted more than $675,000 in “monetary contributions” and “in-kind contributions” from a political action committee run by then-Virginia Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe — a Clinton Foundation board member — and the Democratic Party of Virginia’s main fundraising committee.
McCabe recused himself from the FBI investigation in November 2016, but not before officials told an agent in the bureau’s Criminal Investigative Division that “based on the sensitivities surrounding the Clinton Foundation,” agents were barred from subpoenaing “additional records related to the Foundation [or] the Clintons,” “conduct[ing] any interviews related to the Foundation or the Clintons” or “shar[ing] any of the Foundation bank account info with any other offices,” Grassley noted.
Other emails obtained by the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman found the FBI did “not want to create any impression we are investigating the Clinton Foundation or the Clintons,” a directive that came from “higher, i.e., the DD [deputy director].”
Additionally, documents from September and November 2016 showed that the Manhattan US Attorney’s Office obtained a search warrant for former Rep. Anthony Weiner’s laptop and requested a briefing on it as part of its separate “Midyear Exam” probe into Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information while secretary of state.
But prosecutors from the Southern District of New York were blocked from reviewing the laptop and initially rebuffed when they requested a briefing about its contents by FBI HQ.
Only the DC-based investigative team was allowed to peruse the files, due to a determination by McCabe and then-Executive Assistant of the FBI’s national security branch, Michael Steinbach.
Additional records disclosed that FBI officials “omitted ALL reference to interference from DOJ and FBI leadership” when a prosecutor in the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Arkansas requested information to reopen the Clinton Foundation probe.
Jonathan Ross, who later served as US attorney in that Arkansas district, wrote in a September 2018 email: “as we have previously discussed, there appear to be conflicts of interest for the leadership there related to the 2016 [Clinton] investigations that undermine any confidence we might normally have in looking to them for assistance.”
The Arkansas office later recommended that the DOJ’s Office of Inspector General look into the matter in July 2019, noting they tried to put a stop to “the interference by DOJ and FBI leadership at the time.”
Grassley’s documents highlight how then-DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz also never got to see the same files showing the purported conflicts of interest when investigating the Clinton probe in 2018.
“The mainstream media smeared any investigation into Hillary Clinton as unfounded nonsense, but in reality, line agents and federal prosecutors seeking to follow up on legitimate leads were sidelined by partisan leadership looking to save Clinton’s reputation,” Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a statement. “That’s a night-and-day departure from how the Biden Justice Department handled the Arctic Frost investigation against President Trump.”
“For too long, our Justice Department has chosen winners and losers instead of enforcing the law without regard to power, party or privilege. That must never happen again,” he added. “I thank Attorney General Bondi and [FBI] Director [Kash] Patel for turning over these records, so the American people finally know how their Justice Department failed in the Clinton investigations.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee chairman has asked Bondi for more records by Dec. 29 related to the Weiner laptop search warrant, the Clinton Foundation probe and other internal emails.
Reps for the Clinton Foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
McCabe declined to comment when contacted by The Post.
