The investigation is looking at a variety of allegations, including whether it was improper for former FBI Director James Comey to make a public announcement about not recommending prosecution over the email arrangement – he also faulted Clinton and her associates for being “extremely careless” with classified information.
Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz also is reviewing whether FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe should have recused himself from the probe early because of his family’s ties to the Democratic Party.
.. Horowitz told lawmakers during a November congressional hearing that he is aiming to release the report in the “March, April time period.”
.. Horowitz said his team would look at whether “certain underlying investigative decisions were based on improper considerations.”
.. Horowitz said the review is looking at whether any DOJ or FBI employees improperly disclosed non-public information.
.. “The political compromise of the DOJ and FBI during the Obama administration needs to be confronted immediately,” Fitton said.
.. But Fitton also acknowledged that the report could be welcomed by Clinton – who has blamed Comey’s Oct. 28, 2016 letter telling Congress he had re-opened the email investigation for contributing significantly to her loss.
[Notice how Foxnews puts 3 photos side by side, simulating what it would be like if Peter Strzok were in a police lineup]
Trump Supporter Emailed Campaign About Public WikiLeaks Trove
Top officials were notified Russia-stolen communications were available in September 2016
A Donald Trump supporter in September 2016 emailed top campaign officials, including Mr. Trump and one of his sons, to flag a recent release of emails stolen by Russian hackers and published by the website WikiLeaks, according to an email reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
“WikiLeaks has uploaded another (huge 678mb) archive of files from DNC,” wrote the supporter, Michael Erickson, who is president of a Virginia aviation-consulting company. “It is too big for me to send you by e-mail attachments,” he added, and provided a link to a database where he said they could “download it yourselves.” Mr. Erickson also provided a decryption key in the Sept. 14 message.
Mike Flynn’s Lawyers Cut Off Information-Sharing With Trump Legal Team
The special counsel’s investigation has ensnared Mr. Flynn—and his son, Michael Flynn Jr. —on a number of fronts. Mr. Mueller is probing the alleged role played by Mr. Flynn and his son in a plan to forcibly remove a Muslim cleric living in the U.S. and deliver him to Turkey in return for millions of dollars, the Journal previously reported. Under the alleged proposal, Mr. Flynn and his son were to be paid as much as $15 million for delivering Fethullah Gulen to the Turkish government.
.. Mr. Mueller is also investigating what role, if any, Mr. Flynn or his son may have played in a private effort to obtain Hillary Clinton’s emails from Russian hackers
The Trump Collusion Case Is Not Getting the Clinton Emails Treatment
FBI director James Comey began drafting a statement exonerating Clinton months before the investigation ended — i.e., before over a dozen key witnesses, including Clinton herself, had been interviewed.
.. Note that the lawyer for Manafort and Gates was forced to testify against her clients based on the theory that she had participated — however unwittingly — in their scheme to cover up their lobbying efforts on behalf of a Ukrainian political party.
.. Aggressively, Mueller’s team contended that even if the lawyer had not intended to help her clients mislead the government, their use of her services was intended to dupe the government. That, Mueller argued, brought their communications with the lawyer under the crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege.
.. Mrs. Clinton’s lawyers were her accomplices.
.. the Justice Department refused to invoke the crime-fraud exception to explore what advice Clinton lawyers gave her information technology contractor before he supposedly took it on himself to delete and destroy her emails.
.. subjects of the .. decided which emails to surrender to the State Department and which to withhold as “private” — were permitted to act as attorneys for the principal subject of the investigation, Clinton herself.
.. decided which emails to surrender to the State Department and which to withhold as “private” — were permitted to act as attorneys for the principal subject of the investigation, Clinton herself.
.. the FBI did not seize the servers of the Democratic National Committee, even though much of the collusion case hinges on the conclusion that these servers were hacked by Russian operatives. Instead, the FBI politely requested that the servers be surrendered so the Bureau’s own renowned forensic investigators could examine them. When the DNC refused, the Justice Department did not issue a subpoena or obtain a search warrant; to the contrary, the FBI and DOJ agreed to accept the findings of CrowdStrike, a private investigative firm retained by the DNC’s (and the Clinton campaign’s) attorneys.
.. George Papadopoulos is a low-level subject of the collusion investigation who did not commit any crimes in his many contacts with Russia-connected sources. Yet Mueller induced him to plead guilty to a felony count of lying to investigators about the timing of his first meeting with such a source
.. while a number of Clinton subordinates asserted their Fifth Amendment right to refuse to answer questions on the ground that truthful answers could incriminate them, none of them was prosecuted. Instead, the Obama Justice Department gave them immunity.
.. Mrs. Clinton claimed not to know what the designation “[C]” means in classified documents. As a longtime consumer of classified information, Clinton obviously knew it means “confidential.”
.. Clinton ludicrously told interviewing agents she thought “[C]” might have something to do with putting information in alphabetical order.
.. Often, the Justice Department is so hell-bent on making the case, it will play an intimidating game of hardball if that’s what it takes. On rare occasions, though, it works just as hard to not make the case — to see no evil.