It’s hard to rank Clinton scandals.
Hillary’s email scandal has been the focus for good reason — it’s been more accessible because the records at issue were public records even if hidden and destroyed by Hillary in good measure.
The Washington Post reports tonight that the Huma-Weiner computer issue that led to FBI Director Comey’s letter to Congress was discovered in early October. The sequence of events leading to Comey’s letter was not as quick or haphazard as reported, but fairly methodical to the point that Comey felt word would leak out because prosecutors needed a search warrant:
Senior FBI officials were informed about the discovery of new emails potentially relevant to the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server at least two weeks before Director James B. Comey notified Congress, according to federal officials familiar with the investigation.The officials said that Comey was told that there were new emails before he received a formal briefing last Thursday, although the precise timing is unclear….A formal briefing for Comey with the investigative team was held Oct. 27 at FBI headquarters. At that point, Comey was given a complete presentation of everything the team knew about the trove….But Comey and others felt there was enough information at that point to pursue a warrant, which would permit the investigators on the Clinton case to read the emails, officials said. They could not read them without legal permission because the emails had been discovered in the separate criminal probe involving Weiner.When Comey and the officials decided to seek a warrant, they knew that would involve more people, both at the FBI and the Justice Department. Comey was concerned that the explosive information that they had to renew the Clinton investigation would leak out.“It could not be done in secret,” an official with knowledge of the investigation said. “It’s a volatile subject and a major topic in the presidential campaign.”But the overriding factor in Comey’s decision was that he felt he had to tell Congress what he was doing because he had testified under oath this past summer and “told Congress and the world” that the Clinton email investigation was complete, and now that was no longer true, an official said.
At the same time this more Comey-friendly narrative is being pursued by WaPo, there is explosive reporting from Brett Baier on the investigation of the Clinton Foundation:
The FBI’s investigation into the Clinton Foundation that has been going on for more than a year has now taken a “very high priority,” separate sources with intimate knowledge of the probe tell Fox News.FBI agents have interviewed and re-interviewed multiple people on the foundation case, which is looking into possible pay for play interaction between then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. The FBI’s White Collar Crime Division is handling the investigation.Even before the WikiLeaks dumps of alleged emails linked to the Clinton campaign, FBI agents had collected a great deal of evidence, law enforcement sources tell Fox News.”There is an avalanche of new information coming in every day,” one source told Fox News, who added some of the new information is coming from the WikiLeaks documents and new emails.FBI agents are “actively and aggressively pursuing this case,” and will be going back and interviewing the same people again, some for the third time, sources said.Agents are also going through what Clinton and top aides have said in previous interviews and the FBI 302, documents agents use to report interviews they conduct, to make sure notes line up, according to sources.
Andy McCarthy explains how the email and Clinton Foundation investigations are related, The Clinton E-mails Are Critical to the Clinton Foundation Investigation:
Now, however, let’s consider the Clinton Foundation. While Clinton may not have been motivated to harm our national security, she was precisely motivated to conceal the corrupt interplay of the State Department and the Clinton Foundation. That was the real objective of the home-brew server system: Mrs. Clinton wanted to shield from Congress, the courts, and the public the degree to which she, Bill, and their confederates were cashing in on her awesome political influence as secretary of state. That is exactly why she did business outside the government system that captures all official e-mails; and, critically, it perfectly explains why she deleted and attempted to destroy 33,000 e-mails — risibly claiming they involved yoga routines, Chelsea’s wedding, and the like.
The Clinton Foundation pay-for-play explains why the desire to hide records of what Hillary was doing as Secretary of State. It’s all interconnected.
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