May 15, 2023 – Durham Report: FBI shut down four criminal investigations into the Clintons

Special Counsel John Durham’s highly-anticipated report on the origins of the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign in 2016 revealed that top leaders at the Bureau shut down four criminal investigations into Hillary and Bill Clinton.

In 2014, the FBI investigated a “well-placed” confidential source’s claims that an unnamed foreign government intended to “contribute to Hillary Clinton’s anticipated presidential campaign, as a way to gain influence with Clinton should she win the presidency,” the report said.

The field office investigating these claims “almost immediately” sought a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant, but it remained “in limbo” for approximately four months, primarily due to Clinton’s then-expected presidential campaign.

 

As stated in Durham’s report:

According to another agent, the application lingered because “everyone was ‘super more careful’” and “scared with the big name [Clinton]” involved. 321 “[T]hey were pretty “tippy-toeing’ around HRC because there was a chance she would be the next President.”

Durham’s report also revealed that three separate FBI field offices in Washington, DC; Little Rock, Arkansas; and New York City, New York, opened investigations into “possibly criminal activity involving the Clinton Foundation” less than one year before the November 2016 presidential election.

One of these investigations was spawned by Breitbart News contributor Peter Schweizer’s book, Clinton Cash, which exposed the Clinton Foundation’s global nexus of influence peddling.

As Durham’s report detailed:

Beginning in January 2016, three different FBI field offices, the New York Field Office (“NYFO*), the Washington Field Office (“WFO*), and the Little Rock Field Office (“LRFO**), opened investigations into possible criminal activity involving the Clinton Foundation. The IRFO case opening communication referred to an intelligence product and corroborating financial reporting that a particular commercial “industry likely engaged a federal public official in a flow of benefits scheme, namely, large monetary contributions were made to a non-profit, under both direct and indirect control of the federal public official, in exchange for favorable government action and/or influence.” The WFO investigation was opened as a preliminary investigation, because the Case Agent wanted to determine if he could develop additional information to corroborate the allegations in a recently-published book, Clinton Cash by Peter Schweizer, before seeking to convert the matter to a full investigation. Additionally, the LRFO and NYFO investigations included predication based on source reporting that identified foreign governments that had made, or offered to make, contributions to the Foundation in exchange for favorable or preferential treatment from Clinton.

Speaking with the DailyMail, Schweizer said he received “a call from somebody from the New York FBI office after the book came out.”

“There was a New York Times piece on Uranium One. It was kind of confirming what we had in the book. That’s what I think triggered the interest,” Schweizer said. “With the Clinton Foundation, you have the transfer of large sums of money, you had policy positions that were affected, and you had certifiable evidence.”

“I’m not a lawyer, so I can’t say what was illegal. But there was definitely a there there, with all the speeches, donations, and policy effects, and nobody’s ever really disputed that,” he added.

Ultimately, FBI leadership held a joint meeting with the three field offices, FBI Headquarters, and appropriate United States Attorney’s offices. The first joint meeting occurred on February 1, 2016. However, the Department of Justice Public Integrity Section Chief, Ray Hulser, said the FBI briefing at that meeting was “poorly presented,” and saw “insufficient predication for at least one of the investigations.”

A second joint meeting occurred on February 22, 2016, which former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe chaired.

McCabe “initially directed the field offices to close their cases,” but later agreed to “reconsider the final disposition of the cases,” Durham’s report noted.

Paul Abbate, who was the FBI Washington Field Office’s Assistant Director-in-Charge at the time, described McCabe’s demeanor during the joint meeting as “negative,” “annoyed,” and “angry.”

As the report detailed:

According to Abbate, McCabe stated “they [the Department] say there’s nothing here” and “why are we even doing this?” At the close of the meeting, Campbell directed that for any overt investigative steps to be taken, the Deputy Director’s approval would be required.

Durham’s report also revealed that former FBI Director James Comey demanded, through an intermediary, the New York Field Office “cease and desist” their Clinton Foundation investigation.

Earlier in the week, McCabe claimed the Durham report was “never a legitimate investigation.”

“We knew from the very beginning exactly what John Durham was going to conclude, and that’s what we saw today. We knew from the very beginning this was never a legitimate investigation,” McCabe said. “This was a political errand to exact some sort of retribution on Donald Trump’s perceived enemies and the FBI.”

Durham’s report highlighted the FBI’s different approaches regarding their investigations into Clinton and former President Donald Trump.

“The use of defensive briefings in 2015 contrasts with the FBI’s failure to provide a defensive briefing to the Trump campaign approximately one year later when Australia shared the information from Papadopoulos,” the report stated. (Read more: Breitbart, 5/18/2023)  (Archive)

May 31, 2023 – Judicial Watch: Major revelations in Trump Russia scandal, Clinton Corruption—Hillary did It, Obama knew

(…) This month, significant new evidence comes to correct the historical record—and prove Tom right. The new evidence comes from the report of Special Counsel John Durham.

Attorney General William Barr appointed Durham in April 2019 to get to the bottom of the Russia mess. Barr told Congress he wanted a review of “the genesis and conduct of intelligence activities directed at the Trump campaign during 2016.”

Durham’s prosecution record is a bust—two failed court cases and one low-level plea deal—but his 300-page, highly detailed final report is sensational.

Durham’s central mandate was to investigate the opening and conduct of the Crossfire Hurricane probe into possible Trump collusion with elements of the Russian government, particularly whether “any person or entity violated the law in connection with the intelligence, counter-intelligence, or law-enforcement activities directed at the 2016 presidential campaign.”

“Our findings,” the Durham Report notes, “…are sobering.”

Finding: at the opening of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, there was no evidence of collusion.

 “Neither U.S. law enforcement nor the intelligence community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” the Durham Report noted. [Italics added].

 Durham goes into stunning detail. He notes that Crossfire Hurricane “was opened as a full investigation without [the FBI] ever having spoken to the persons who provided the information…without (i) any significant review of its own intelligence databases, (ii) collection and examination of any relevant intelligence from other U.S. intelligence entities, (iii) interviews of witnesses essential to understand the information it had received, (iv) using any of the standard analytical tools typically employed by the FBI in evaluating raw intelligence. Had it done so…the FBI would have learned that their own experienced Russia analysts had no information about Trump being involved with Russian leadership officials, nor were others in sensitive positions at the CIA, the NSA, and the State Department aware of such evidence.”

Finding: Obama and Biden knew about Clinton plans to link Trump to Russia.

Durham reports that  top Obama administration officials—including the president, Vice President Biden, the FBI director, the Attorney General and others—were briefed by CIA Director John Brennan on reports of a plan by the Clinton campaign to “vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security services.”

Elements of the Clinton Plan were disclosed in 2020 when the Director of National Intelligence reported it in a declassified letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, but Durham adds significant new context—and hints there is more hidden behind the walls of government secrecy. In a classified appendix to the report, Durham notes, there are “specific indications and additional facts that heightened the potential relevance of [the Clinton Plan intelligence] to the Office’s inquiry.”

In an interview with the special counsel, Durham notes, Hillary Clinton dodged questions about “her alleged plan to stir up a scandal between Trump and the Russians. Clinton stated it was ‘really sad,’ but ‘I get it, you have to go down every rabbit hole.’”

Finding: the Steele Dossier was a slanderous Clinton campaign creation devoid of real evidence and used by the FBI to target Carter Page.

 Durham devotes more than 150 pages of his report to the Steele Dossier and its devastating ramifications.

“Perkins Coie, a law firm acting as counsel to the Clinton campaign…retained Fusion GPS…to conduct opposition research on Trump and his associates.” Fusion GPS hired Steele. From July through December 2016, Durham wrote, “Steele and Fusion GPS prepared a series of reports containing derogatory information about purported ties between Trump and Russia. According to the reports, important connections between Trump and Russia ran through campaign manager Paul Manafort and foreign policy advisor Carter Page.”

Durham details at length how the Steele reports “played an important role in [FBI] applications to the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] targeting Page, a U.S. person. The FBI relied substantially on the [Steele] reports to assert probable cause that Page was knowingly engaged in clandestine intelligence activities on behalf of Russia.”

The problem with the FBI’s assertion? Durham notes: “the FBI was not able to corroborate a single substantive allegation contained in the Steele reports, despite protracted efforts to do so.” [Italics added.]

Finding: Clinton good—Trump bad—the FBI repeatedly gave all things Clinton a pass while hitting Trump hard.

 In the course of his investigation, Durham learned of three attempts by foreign governments to funnel money to the Clintons or otherwise buy influence. Durham is measured, but it’s easy to read between the lines on the double standard. “The speed and manner in which the FBI opened and investigated Crossfire Hurricane during the presidential election season based on raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence also reflected a noticeable departure from how it approached prior matters involving possible attempted foreign election interference plans aimed at the Clinton campaign,” Durham noted.

In the eighteen months leading up to the 2016 election, “the FBI was required to deal with a number of proposed [Clinton] investigations that had the potential of affecting the election. In each of those instances, the FBI moved with considerable caution.”

In one instance, the FBI ended the case after its confidential source was found to be funneling money to the Clintons. In a second case, the FBI placed so many restrictions on how matters were to be handled that “essentially no investigative activities occurred for months leading up to the election.” In the third case, the FBI elected to give “defensive briefings” to Clinton and others. No such briefings, Durham notes, were offered at any time to the Trump campaign.

Finding: Investigations into the Clinton Foundation were killed by top Justice Department and FBI officials.

 Durham notes that beginning in January 2016, three different FBI field offices—Little Rock, New York, and Washington—“opened investigations into possible criminal activity involving the Clinton Foundation.” Foreign governments were suspected of making, or planning to make, “contributions to the Foundation in exchange for favorable or preferential treatment” from Hillary Clinton.

Top Washington officials opposed the probes, Durham reports. One Justice Department section chief interviewed by Durham recalled the department’s reaction to a Clinton Foundation briefing as “hostile.”

At a February 2016 meeting about possibly closing the Clinton Foundation cases, a participant told Durham that FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was “negative” and “annoyed” and “angry,” wanting to close the probes. “Why are we even doing this?” McCabe is reported to have said. Judicial Watch has reported extensively on McCabe and his Democratic Party ties.

FBI field officials prevailed on McCabe at that meeting to keep the investigations open, but six months later the inquiries were dead in the water, Durham reports. The Washington and Little Rock field office probes were folded into the New York investigation. But the New York investigation went nowhere because Justice Department branches in New York declined to issue subpoenas.

Last week, the New York Times added new twists to the Clinton Foundation story, noting that after prosecutors in New York declined to issue subpoenas, the case moved back to Little Rock. Prosecutors in Little Rock closed the case in January 2021 but not without protest from line FBI agents in Arkansas. The “top agent in Little Rock,” the Times reported, “wanted it known that career prosecutors, not FBI officials, were behind the decision” to close the case.

The Times reported that the FBI received an official “declination memo” closing the case in August 2021—effectively making the decision to stop investigating the Clinton Foundation a move by the Biden Administration.

That’s a move worth a closer look. So is the FBI claim, according to the Times, that all of the evidence developed during the investigation “has been returned or otherwise destroyed.”

After all the revelations about misconduct at the highest levels of government in the Trump Russia saga, it’s impossible to take FBI assertions at face value—as John Durham has proved, and as Tom Fitton presciently recognized so long ago. (Read more: Judicial Watch, 5/31/2023)  (Archive)