CHAT 101 COMMENTS
FILE - In this April 5, 2016 file photo, FBI Director James Comey speaks in Detroit. Comey hinted at an event in London on Thursday, April 21, 2016, that the FBI paid more than $1 million to break into the locked iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino attackers. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, File)
A former FBI assistant director told CNN Saturday night that the FBI has for months been conducting an "intensive" investigation into the Clinton Foundation. The former G-man, Tom Fuentes, also contradicted CNN's reporting from earlier this year that said the FBI's attempts to open a public corruption case into the Clinton Foundation were quashed by the DOJ. CNN reported back in August that three field offices wanted to launch an investigation, but DOJ officials had pushed back against opening a case because "the request seemed more political than substantive." There were conflicting reports at the time, however, which said a joint FBI-U.S. Attorney probe was indeed underway.
Fuentes said, "The FBI has an intensive investigation, ongoing, into the Clinton Foundation." He added that "the reports that three divisions came in with a request to Washington to open cases, and that they were turned down by the Department of Justice -- that's not true."
"What was turned down was that they be the originating office," Fuentes explained. "Headquarters at the FBI made the determination that the investigation would go forward as a comprehensive, unified case, and be coordinated. So that investigation is ongoing and Huma Abedin, and her role in the foundation and possible allegations concerning the activities of the secretary of state, the nature of the foundation and possible pay to play -- that's still being looked at."
Fuentes continued, saying that "now you have her emails on a computer where the FBI already has a separate case going for Anthony Weiner's alleged activities with a minor girl -- so in a sense it's almost turned into a one-stop shopping for the FBI. They could have implications affecting three separate investigations on one computer."
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Fuentes said that last week the team looking at Weiner's computers went to the team that worked on the Clinton email case and showed the emails to them.
"And that team said, 'this is really significant, we need to take this to the director, maybe we need to take another look at the email case,'" he explained. According to Fuentes, Comey sent out the letter to the congressional leaders the very next day.
Fuentes seemed to want to stress the importance of the Clinton Foundation investigation: "Intermixed with all of this is still the ongoing foundation investigation ... so three separate cases," he said.
Fuentes told CNN that several "senior officials" in and out of the bureau had been apprising him of what was going on with the investigations.
