- The FBI won’t disclose whether it met with senior officials of the Intelligence Community Inspector General.
- TheDCNF confirmed that the ICIG briefed top bureau officials on three separate occasions to warn the FBI of an “anomaly” they found in 30,000 in-bound and outgoing emails.
- The anomaly showed a code embedded in Clinton’s server was producing in real time a “courtesy copy” to a third party.
The FBI refuses to disclose whether or not it met with senior members of the Intelligence Community Inspector General on the subject of foreign intrusion of former Secretary Hillary Clinton’s private server.
An FBI spokeswoman refused to confirm if Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) officials — including Frank Rucker, its chief investigator — briefed top bureau officials about evidence of penetration of Clinton’s private server by a Chinese government intelligence operation. “We have no comment,” she told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Earlier Wednesday, an FBI spokesman released what appeared to be a categorical statement about the Clinton server: “The FBI has not found any evidence the servers were compromised,” the FBI stated.
The statement does not address a central aspect of TheDCNF’s reporting, which was that the ICIG briefed top bureau officials on three separate occasions to warn the FBI of an “anomaly” they found in 30,000 in-bound and outgoing emails. The report is based on an intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter. The anomaly showed a code embedded in Clinton’s server was producing in real time a “courtesy copy” to a third party.
The third party was a Chinese state-owned company based in Northern Virginia just outside of Washington, D.C., and was part of an ongoing Chinese government intelligence operation, according to two separate sources with direct knowledge of the matter.
According to one source, the last ICIG briefing was held in June 2016 about a month before former FBI Director James Comey stated that he did not recommend any indictment of Clinton for mishandling classified materials.
Comey in that widely reported July 5, 2016 press conference stated he did not find “direct evidence” that Clinton’s email domain was successfully hacked.
He added, “we assess that we would be unlikely to see such direct evidence” and that, “We do assess that hostile actors gained access to the private commercial e-mail accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact from her personal account.”
“Given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail account,” Comey told reporters at the news conference.
Before the FBI’s statement, Presidential Donald Trump tweeted on the subject. The president posted his first tweet on the subject on Tuesday night:
Report just out: “China hacked Hillary Clinton’s private Email Server.” Are they sure it wasn’t Russia (just kidding!)? What are the odds that the FBI and DOJ are right on top of this? Actually, a very big story. Much classified information!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 29, 2018
A second tweet was early Wednesday morning:
Hillary Clinton’s Emails, many of which are Classified Information, got hacked by China. Next move better be by the FBI & DOJ or, after all of their other missteps (Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Ohr, FISA, Dirty Dossier etc.), their credibility will be forever gone!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 29, 2018
Rep. Louie Gohmert, the Texas Republican who originally disclosed the ICIG had discovered a foreign government breach of Clinton’s server, dismissed the FBI statement that the bureau had “not found any evidence” her server had been compromised.
“It was the Obama-appointed Intelligence Community Inspector General that discovered the breach. It was not the FBI that found it, so their statement was technically correct, but very deceptive in its omission,” the congressman said in a statement Wednesday.
To bolster the bureau’s statement, the FBI spokeswoman referred TheDCNF to the June 2018 Justice Department Inspector General report that addressed the prospect of a foreign intruder.
That report, however, is less than definitive. Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department IG, noted an intrusion by foreign intelligence services was possible.
The FBI “investigation successfully determined classified information was improperly stored and transmitted on Clinton’s email server, and classified information was compromised by unauthorized individuals, to include foreign government’s or intelligence services, via cyber intrusion or other means [referring to compromises of email accounts associated with certain individuals who communicated with Clinton’s server, such as SidneyBlumenthal],” the IG concluded.
The report also indicated there were limitations of a forensic investigation which was carried out in 2017 by the Boston FBI Field Office’s Inspection Division, stating, the structure of the investigation “and treatment of the investigation as a traditional espionage matter rather than a criminal investigation significantly hindered the ability of the investigative team to obtain full, accurate and timely information.”
Another FBI forensic agent told the Justice Department inspector general, he felt “fairly confident” there wasn’t an intrusion.
This post was updated to include a quote from Gohmert.
