The Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Hillary Clinton have a HUGE Weiner problem that is even bigger than we first realized.
According to the recently released inspector general report, on September 28 and 29, 2016 the New York office of the FBI immediately reported to the Washington headquarters its discovery of, first, 141,000 and then 350,000 emails on the laptop of Anthony Weiner — also known as “Carlos Danger,” a now-convicted sex offender. Mr. Weiner is the husband of Hillary Clinton’s inseparable aide Huma Abedin.
Now we know by October 4, the New York office had found 700,000 emails. The New York agents had seen and reported to FBI leadership they had seen email headers, all domain names, Mrs. Clinton’s initials on one sensitive but not classified document, and the missing BlackBerry backups.
The New York agents described it as the “entire file” of all Hillary Clinton emails from 2006 until 2016, including the BlackBerry messages that Comey himself had referred to as “the golden emails.”
The “mid-year team” of FBI agents investigating the email issues had been told by Clinton’s staff and lawyers that there was a complete archive on both a thumb drive and a laptop, but remarkably, no one seemed to have them. At least some on the mid-year team were frustrated and believed Clinton’s attorneys were lying. Others, including Comey, claimed they were looking for those under every “stone” but no one could find them.
Remember: Hillary Clinton’s attorneys produced approximately 30,000 of her emails, and they appear to have claimed that was the entirety of her work-related emails. Mrs. Clinton, staff and technical support had deliberately deleted approximately 33,000 emails that were just about “yoga” and “wedding plans.” They produced nothing from the beginning of her tenure as Secretary of State. Then, her server was wiped with “BleachBit.”
Yet, lo and behold, here so many emails were. Hundreds of thousands of emails, the “entire file” — everything Clinton — including data from the BlackBerrys and other devices for which the FBI and DOJ decided not to run search warrants because they “assumed” they had been destroyed.
So what did the FBI do with this “explosive” “bomb” including the “golden emails” on the BlackBerry that everyone knew was missing from the production?
Nothing — at least nothing to obtain evidence.
There was a flurry of activity at Headquarters. Strzok-Page texts show that Strzok, McCabe and Priestap discussed the Weiner laptop among themselves shortly after the “bomb” dropped in the video conference that day. In fact, Priestap and Strzok were waiting outside McCabe’s office to discuss it while McCabe was with Comey. There were also two calls between Comey and McCabe that evening.
Does anyone really think they were not having their own “oh shit” moment?
The FBI case agent in New York sure had one.
Remarkably, McCabe, Comey, Priestap, Strzok,and then Mary McCord at DOJ have little recollection of much of this at all. It just kind of “fell off the radar.” They were “busy.” it was probably “duplicates,” and their focus was on the “Russia” investigation to which they gave priority. And after all, they did not expect any information on the laptop to “change the outcome of the case.”
Of course they did not, but the only reason for that is that the outcome that she would not be prosecuted was a foregone conclusion from the beginning
Obama and Hillary had both declared it.
Comey, McCabe, Strzok, and others gave various reasons for sitting on the “entire file” of Clinton’s emails for a month. The inspector general examines — and resoundingly rejected —each of them.
For one, they all asserted that they expected and hoped that the emails were simply duplicates of ones they had already reviewed. This is clearly impossible.
First, just do the math. There were 675,000 of them—at least 350,000 of which they knew from the video call of September 28. Clinton produced approximately 30,000 emails — claiming that included all her work-related emails. Supposedly, her staff culled 33,000 emails that were purely personal.
Combined, that is more than 600,000 emails short of this colossal find, which is ten times the total number of emails Clinton and company claimed existed.
Second, the agents and Comey all knew they had no BlackBerry messages from Mrs. Clinton’s production. But from Weiner’s laptop, they knew from the headers and dates, they had all of those — the first two months of her tenure as secretary of state.
This was the motherlode of Clinton culpability — the answers to everything they did not want anyone to know.
And there’s more.
As early as October 3, the Weiner case agent was “agitated” over the sound of “crickets” from headquarters and the “inaccurate” statements of Director Comey regarding the number of emails they possessed. He felt compelled to push the issue in New York, all the way up to U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.
The case agent himself recognized that the FBI had 10 times the number of Clinton emails that the director had reported on the record, and they had the significant BlackBerry messages as well. He could not believe someone in New York had not called him to get the hard drive.
Extremely concerned, the case agent went to the U.S. attorneys for the Southern District of New York. An assistant United States attorney told the inspector general the agent believed “somebody was not acting appropriately, somebody was trying to bury this.” The attorneys were concerned the agent might “act out.”
“Act out” means blow the whistle.
United States Attorney Bharara was so sufficiently aware of the deafening silence from Washington that he instructed his chief counsel to document everything his office had done — “with a hundred percent accuracy.” “Things seemed unusual” to him, and he wanted a record of their actions, including their recovery of more than 700,000 emails.
Bharara instructed his deputy to call the Justice Department directly in case “something had fallen through the cracks.” That call made it impossible for the FBI and DOJ to continue to keep this “trove” buried. The same day, October 21, Agent Strzok wrote to Lisa Page: Toscas at DOJ was “now aware NY has hrc-huma emails via weiner invest[igation].”
Finally, five days later, on October 26, the New York case agent was able to talk directly to the mid-year agents. (“Mid-year” is the name the FBI gave the investigation.) The case agent reported again: “Based on the number of emails, we could have every email that Huma and Hillary ever sent each other.” [315].
On October 30, the Department of Justice finally got in gear to get a warrant — to include everything dealing during Mrs. Clinton’s tenure with the State Department and all devices — and especially the Comey-denominated “golden emails” from the BlackBerrys and all the messages sent to Abedin to be given to Mrs. Clinton, right?
Nope.
Shocker #1: Despite everyone’s recognition of the importance of the “explosive” “bomb,” and the “golden emails” on the Weiner laptop, the FBI never even sought to review the “golden” emails. FBI General Counsel Baker pushed hard to expand the application to include those, but Strzok and DOJ prosecutors shot it down.
Shocker #2: They deliberately ignored the emails between Huma Abedin and others — despite knowing she was a proxy for the Secretary and had lied to them in her interview.
Federal investigators knew people would email Abedin, and she would print things out for Clinton. Abedin admitted it was easier for her to print things from home in Brooklyn.
Logically then, it appears it was Abedin who deliberately stripped classified markings from emails to forward the information to Mrs. Clinton so she could then deny ever receiving anything marked classified. It’s called “plausible deniability,” and it was a deliberate and illegal scheme for handling classified information.
Shocker #3: Over analysts’ objections, the FBI never reviewed the Weiner laptop to determine if it had been compromised by foreign agents despite finding that Huma Abedin had forwarded classified information to it. Those were flagrant violations of 18 U.S.C. §793.
There are important conclusions from these facts in the inspector general’s report.
The Weiner laptop almost certainly contains the answers to the public’s questions about all things Clinton — her scandals, the Clinton Foundation pay-to-play, obstruction of justice and also possible espionage act violations.
The FBI’s claim to have reviewed all the relevant Clinton emails is obviously false.
The inspector general’s report belies the FBI’s claim to have left no stone unturned.
The Weiner laptop and content of all iCloud accounts must be immediately obtained and preserved by an independent counsel in whom the public can have confidence.
Justice requires both a full investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s multiple potential crimes and of the efforts of agents of the FBI and the Department of Justice to cover it all up.
Multiple high-ranking officials including Barack Obama were emailing Mrs. Clinton directly or through Huma Abedin. The Weiner laptop and iCloud account had it all. It was the full archive they were supposedly searching for.
Who else among the high-powered elite are the FBI and DOJ protecting by their cover-up?
Sidney Powell, former federal prosecutor and veteran of 500 federal appeals, is the author of “LICENSED TO LIE: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice.” She is a senior fellow of the London Center for Policy Research and senior policy adviser for America First.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.
