A Clinton Foundation donor’s suspicious activity prompted the FBI and several Justice Department field offices to request that DOJ headquarters open a public corruption investigation into the former secretary of state’s family charity.
That’s according to CNN, which provided new details on Thursday to its report on Wednesday that the DOJ had shot down an FBI request to investigate the Clinton Foundation. (RELATED: Loretta Lynch’s DOJ Declined FBI Request To Investigate Clinton Foundation)
Here’s what CNN justice correspondent Pamela Browne reported on Thursday, just before Clinton gave a speech in Michigan laying out her economic policies.
We’ve learned that what initially grabbed the FBI’s attention to this a bank notified the FBI noting that there was “suspicious activity” surrounding a foreign donor to the Clinton Foundation. So what the FBI wanted to do, earlier this year, is open up a case and investigate whether there was a conflict of interest at the time that that donor was making contributions to the Clinton Foundation during Clinton’s tenure at the State Department.
Browne, who did not provide any details about the Clinton Foundation donor, reported that three DOJ field offices agreed with the FBI’s suggestion. But the idea was nixed during a meeting held between DOJ executives and FBI officials earlier this year.
Browne also reported that sources said that there was disagreement among DOJ officials at the meeting about whether to open the probe, which would have occurred alongside an investigation into whether Clinton mishandled classified information on her private email server.
That decision to forego a Clinton Foundation investigation was not the DOJ’s first. Browne reported that the DOJ entertained the idea last year after the publication of the book “Clinton Cash.” In that work, author Peter Schweizer pointed to numerous apparent conflicts of interest between Clinton Foundation donors and the Clinton State Department.
But top DOJ officials said that some of the claims were unsubstantiated and that there was insufficient evidence to open an investigation.
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