WASHINGTON — The FBI barely glanced at potentially crucial evidence in its investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state, a newly declassified watchdog report revealed Monday.
A confidential source gave thumb drives to the FBI with data acquired via cyber intrusions at the State Department — which included emails from former President Barack Obama and others, according to a declassified version of a Justice Department Inspector General report.
But the feds declined to “comprehensively” analyze those drives due to privilege concerns about victim data — despite an internal draft memo concluding it was necessary to “assess the national security risks” pertaining to Clinton’s private server use.
“This document shows an extreme lack of effort and due diligence in the FBI’s investigation of former Secretary Clinton’s email usage and mishandling of highly classified information,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said of the watchdog report.
Grassley released the declassified appendix to the June 2018 watchdog report by former DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who currently holds the same position at the Federal Reserve Board and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
It is unclear whether the FBI has since carried out a more thorough probe of the hard drives since the 2018 watchdog report was released.
During the 2016 campaign cycle, the FBI Cyber Division had sought to obtain access to those hard drives to conduct targeted searches for information relevant to the Clinton probe, but was rebuffed, witnesses told the watchdog.
Then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe penned a memo to then-US Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates asking to use those thumb drives for the bureau’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
That request was also shot down due to concerns that the FBI’s planned search parameters were too broad and didn’t properly safeguard privileged information.
The thumb drives in question were “queried” at least three times, but the purposes behind that were redacted. At least one of those queries came from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team. One witness searched for Clinton and found a redacted number of results, including “clintonemail.com.”
Grassley faulted former FBI Director James Comey for the bureau’s failure to “perform fundamental investigative work and left key pieces of evidence on the cutting room floor.”
“The Comey FBI’s negligent approach and perhaps intentional lack of effort in the Clinton investigation is a stark contrast to its full-throated investigation of the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, which was based on the uncorroborated and now discredited Steele dossier,” claimed Grassley, 91.
“Comey’s decision-making process smacks of political infection.”
Dismissed intelligence
Another notable detail in the watchdog report appendix is that the FBI stumbled upon Russian-language intelligence alleging that former US Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Comey were interfering in the investigation “to help the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, respectively.”
Investigators translated the intelligence documents into English.
The intel also included claims that then-Democratic National Convention Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz had communicated with two individuals who worked at the Soros Open Society Foundations and told them she was confident that the FBI didn’t have evidence against Clinton, because “data was removed from the mail servers just in time.”
Officials speculated that the intelligence could have come from a cyber attack at the Atlantic Council.
The documents also claimed that Comey, who registered as a Republican prior to 2016, was set on “dragging this investigation until the presidential elections, in order to effectively undermine the chances” for Clinton to win.
But Peter Strzok, then the FBI deputy assistant counterintelligence director who was the lead agent on the investigation, pushed his team to comb through the Russian documents via keyword searches and concluded there were no underlying hacked communications included.
Comey concluded that the documents weren’t credible, and witnesses told the watchdog that they contained information that was “verifiably false.”
The former FBI honcho also defended his decision not to inform Lynch before going public with his July 6, 2016, statement declaring that the Feds wouldn’t pursue criminal charges against Clinton over the email debacle, arguing that he was afraid of leaks.
His statement exonerating Clinton came prior to interviews with multiple key witnesses related to the probe.
The FBI later opened its Crossfire Hurricane investigation into President Trump, looking into whether his campaign colluded with the Kremlin to secure the White House.
“After nearly a decade in the shadows” Grassley said of the watchdog appendix being made public, “this information is now coming to light thanks to Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel’s dedicated efforts to fulfill my congressional request.”
