Huma Abedin and Hillary Clinton at a Democratic presidential candidates debate in 2015. (Reuters photo: Jim Young)

The FBI’s Dubious Probe of Hillary’s Emails

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by Deroy Murdock

It was a veritable spa of special treatment.

The FBI did everything but drive Hillary’s getaway car.
Former secretary of state Clinton is a free woman largely thanks to the tender loving care that the FBI provided her and her conspirators during its probe of her illegal, unsecure email server and related abuse of government secrets. GOP lawmakers concluded this after grilling FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe on December 21, behind closed doors, according to John Solomon’s molar-grinding exposé in Tuesday’s The Hill.
“For the first time, investigators say they have secured written evidence that the FBI believed there was evidence that some laws were broken,” Solomon reported. This proof includes what Solomon calls revelations of “irregularities and contradictions” in the FBI’s inquiry.
Former FBI director James Comey’s first draft of his statement exonerating Hillary Clinton was dated May 2, 2016. But FBI agents on this case still were collecting subpoenaed documents and other relevant evidence. They cataloged additional exhibits on May 13, 19, and 26.
Comey wrote his “Free Hillary!” speech before 12 to 17 separate witnesses had been questioned, including Hillary herself. She was not interrogated until July 2 — fully two months after Comey penned remarks that kept her out of jail. He publicly delivered his words of absolution that July 5, in a widely covered press conference.
Comey’s May 2, 2016, draft reportedly declared, “The sheer volume of information that was properly classified as Secret at the time it was discussed on email (that is, excluding the ‘up classified’ emails) supports an inference that the participants were grossly negligent in their handling of that information.”
Hillary is only human. Even her critics might excuse a couple of goof-ups in which she accidentally exposed a classified record or two. However, Hillary operated a busted water main of classified data that flowed in from State and then gushed out of her lawless, do-it-yourself server. These 113 “born classified” records included eight Top Secret emails, ten Confidential ones, and 37 Secret messages.
Comey’s first draft correctly called this behavior “grossly negligent.” That precise legal standard should have triggered Hillary’s prosecution under the Espionage Act of 1917, 18 U.S. Code § 793. Luckily for her and her comrades, Peter Strzok — a disgraced, vociferously anti-Trump and volubly pro-Hillary FBI official — excised those words and inserted “extremely careless,” language absent from that statute. This removed the pesky formulation and helped Hillary sway voters rather than federal jurors.
Comey’s May 2, 2016, draft was written the day before FBI agents interviewed Hillary’s computer specialist, who contradicted his earlier testimony and confessed that he illegally destroyed pertinent records that Congress sought.
As former national-security adviser Mike Flynn can attest, lying to the FBI is a felony. But in this case, Solomon explains, “the FBI decided not to pursue criminal charges against the witness, and instead gave the technician an immunity deal so he could correct his story.”
This technician, who handled Hillary’s server after it left her Chappaqua, N.Y., mansion, also unlawfully erased emails on its hard drive — soon after Hillary’s attorney, David Kendall, and her State Department chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, spoke with staffers at Platte River Networks, the technical adviser’s employer.
“You have a conference call with Secretary Clinton’s attorneys on March 31, 2015, and on that very same day her emails are deleted by someone who was on that conference call using special BleachBit software,” Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley (R., Iowa) said on the Senate floor. “The emails were State Department records under subpoena by Congress,”as of that March 25.
“What did the FBI do to investigate this apparent obstruction?” Grassley wondered. “According to affidavits filed in federal court — absolutely nothing.”
Also scot-free is Hillary’s top aide, Huma Abedin. According to Judicial Watch, whose Freedom of Information Act lawsuit liberated State documents, “at least 18 classified e-mails” migrated from the State Department’s secured computers to Hillary’s illegal server to the laptop that Abedin shared with her ex-husband, imprisoned pedophile Anthony Weiner, a former Democratic congressman from Brooklyn. “This classified material includes discussions about Saudi Arabia, The Hague, Egypt, South Africa, Zimbabwe, the identity of a CIA official, Malawi, the war in Syria, Lebanon, Hamas, and the PLO,” a Judicial Watchnews release noted on Thursday. Abedin also sent sensitive State Department passwords to her unprotected personal Yahoo account.
Team Hillary has suffered zero consequences for handling state secrets as reverently as one would treat old newspapers.
Secrets also flowed from Abedin’s Blackberry onto Weiner’s PC. “A July 9, 2011, email contained classified information regarding a then-upcoming call between Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu,” Judicial Watch specified. “On November 25, 2011, classified information was sent regarding [then-U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey] Feltman’s notes on the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ impression of the Hamas-Palestine Liberation Organization talks.” So far, Team Hillary has suffered zero consequences for handling state secrets as reverently as one would treat old newspapers.
Kristian Saucier should be so lucky. The former Navy machinist took six photos within the classified area of the USS Alexandria, a nuclear submarine on which he served in 2009. He wanted to show his family his workplace. This was illegal, but hardly nefarious.
Nonetheless, Saucier was prosecuted for unauthorized possession of defense information. He pled guilty, spent one year in federal prison, and is undergoing six months of house arrest. He is now a garbage collector, and his home is in foreclosure.
“We’re really struggling,” Saucier told Fox News Tuesday. “Bill collectors are calling every day. I make only half what I used to make.”
“Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin flagrantly mishandled high-level information, making it available to a pedophile, and they get away with it,” Saucier added. “They should still be charged the same as me.”
Meanwhile, Hillary jets willy-nilly around the globe and even denounced President Trump’s North Korea policy as “dangerous and shortsighted” while peddling her book in Seoul, just 120 miles from Kim Jong-un’s Pyongyang headquarters. This was her most despicable misdeed since losing the White House.
This farce is the polar opposite of the national ideal chiseled in marble above the entrance to the Supreme Court: “Equal Justice Under Law.” It will remain so until Hillary Clinton, her henchpersons, and her FBI fan club are all locked up.
— Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor and a contributing editor ofNational Review Online.