It’s clear now the FBI conducted a sweetheart investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email shenanigans that appears to have been fixed from the start to go nowhere.
Far from exonerating Clinton, the nearly 60 pages of documents expose both the systematic destruction of subpoenaed evidence by Clinton’s aides and the curious lack of interest by investigators in recovering it.
Agents also failed to resolve unanswered questions, reconcile contradictory testimony or sweat uncooperative witnesses.
Comey declared the investigation free of undue influence three days after his agents interviewed Clinton at FBI headquarters under special terms.
What’s more, Comey made the two FBI agents who interviewed Clinton — along with all agents and forensic analysts involved in the so-called investigation — sign non-disclosure agreements gagging them from talking about the case even with other employees.
Comey even let Clinton’s State Department aides Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson sit in on the interview with Clinton’s other lawyers, despite the glaring conflict of interest. FBI documents make clear Mills and Samuelson led the effort to search for and destroy Clinton’s subpoenaed emails and should’ve been prime targets of the investigation.
Comey didn’t even attend her interview and, per his testimony, only read a “summary” of it.
The FBI failed to pursue even the most basic lines of questioning. When Clinton pleaded ignorance about basic classification symbols, agents could’ve produced the State documents she signed acknowledging she was briefed about how to ID and handle classified information at the highest levels.
When Clinton claimed she couldn’t recall “ever contacting” the government computer specialist who set up her unsecured home email server, Comey could’ve produced the same evidence the State inspector general found showing Clinton had in fact paid the aide, Bryan Pagliano, “by check or wire transfer in varying amounts between 2009 and 2013.”
Pagliano was a critical witness. But instead of pressuring him to sing on Clinton and other higher-ups, Comey agreed to give him immunity from criminal prosecution.
Nor did Comey squeeze the Platte River Networks engineer who agents complained gave them “inconsistent statements over the course of three interviews regarding from where on the server he extracted Clinton’s emails.”
Comey also failed to push back against Mills’ claims of “attorney-client privilege” when she refused to divulge details about how she sifted through Clinton’s emails. Her name was on many of the emails containing classified information. At the time, she was Clinton’s chief of staff, not her lawyer. Agents agreed to drop the line of questioning when she threatened to walk out of the interview.
Ron Sievert, a former assistant director at the Justice Department and member of the DOJ’s National Security Working Group, said Comey easily could’ve gone to court to challenge Mills’ privilege claim. He didn’t.
There was also prima facie evidence of obstruction, yet Comey let that slide, too.
FBI investigators were denied two out of five Clinton iPads, 13 of her mobile devices (some of which were smashed with hammers) and even an Apple laptop and a thumb drive containing a 2013 archive of Clinton’s emails that aides claimed got “lost” in the mail. The FBI accepted the story without even determining if the laptop was sent by UPS or USPS.
It’s plain Comey never planned to recommend charges. He didn’t even impanel a federal grand jury to hear the evidence investigators had gathered.
What’s more, Comey and his investigators came across emails that showed signs of a possible pay-for-play scheme between Clinton Foundation donors and the State Department. Yet Comey chose not to expand the email investigation into a probe of public corruption.
“There seems universal agreement among those of us who know the law that no regular US government employee could get away with this,” Sievert said.
Unless Congress forces more public transparency on this Nixonian coverup — demanding the release of not just the FBI case summaries in full, without redactions, but also the supporting documents and transcripts of statements from key witnesses, along with the computer forensics reports — Clinton could waltz into the White House with Mills as her general counsel, where they’ll have the power of executive privilege to cover up even worse scandals.
Paul Sperry is the author of “INFILTRATION: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington.”