As the FBI was opening the books on a bogus investigation of former President Donald Trump, it was closing the books on multiple probes related to former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, according to the report of special counsel John Durham.
A report in the Daily Mail that mined the 300-plus page Durham report said that the FBI first looked into claims about Hillary Clinton in 2014 when a “well-placed” confidential source suggested two foreign governments were trying to make illegal contributions to the 2016 Clinton presidential campaign.
The Durham report said FBI offices in Washington, D.C., Little Rock, Arkansas, and New York City were also peeking into the finances of the Clinton Foundation in early 2016 for “possible criminal activity.”
Senior FBI officials reportedly shut down all four investigations as Clinton was campaigning for the White House.
Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida said those investigations should not end where the FBI dropped them.
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“The Clintons had a team of people at the FBI running interference for them to avoid criminal culpability,” he said. “These matters absolutely warrant additional exposure and review.”
Former Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah agreed that the FBI should finish what it started.
“They had the scent, they were on the trail, and they were shut down by the higher-ups who had an obvious political desire to see Donald Trump lose and Hillary Clinton win,” he said.
“It’s disgusting, really. Absolutely these investigations should be revisited. … There’s no reason why Congress can’t have a series of hearings with the field agents who were pursuing the Clinton Foundation, and public interviews with them as well.”
The Durham report said one field office focusing on the Clinton Foundation found possible evidence that “large monetary contributions were made to a non-profit, under both direct and indirect control of [a] federal public official, in exchange for favorable government action and/or influence.”
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Two field offices had “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,” the report said.
The report said that in February 2016, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe “initially directed the field offices to close their cases.” The probe out of the New York office was killed at the direction of former FBI Director James Comey.
The report said the Clinton campaign’s links to the probe of Trump should have been investigated further to see if the FBI was being manipulated, according to CNN.
Durham said he doubted a successful prosecution could have been developed but that declining to take a critical look at the evidence “amounted to a significant intelligence failure.”
