On Monday, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released the freshly declassified “Clinton Annex.”
An appendix to the Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General’s 2018 report on the conduct of the FBI and DOJ ahead of the 2016 presidential election, the Clinton Annex revealed, among other things, that the FBI under disgraced former director James Comey showed little interest in thoroughly reviewing thumb drives filled with data pertinent to its “investigation” into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information on a private email server.
One curious footnote involving then-President Barack Obama might explain why.
According to the partially redacted Clinton Annex, the FBI obtained eight thumb drives from a source called “T1.” These drives featured data, such as emails, stolen “from various U.S. victims, including the Executive Office of the President (EoP),” as well as other government officials and agencies.
During preliminary analysis, FBI personnel found emails from Obama.
By coincidence or otherwise, the FBI then ignored the majority of those thumb drives.
“Witnesses told us that the FBI has never comprehensively reviewed thumb drives 1 through 5,” the Clinton Annex read.
Then, on the third page of the appendix, the OIG investigators added a remarkable footnote.
They began by explaining that the information in the footnote went “beyond the scope of our current review.” But they thought it worth including nonetheless.
Perhaps they sensed something amiss.
According to FBI witnesses, the FBI Cyber Division tried to conduct a “comprehensive review” of those first five thumb drives. Unidentified DOJ and FBI officials, however, denied them access.
Next, the OIG investigators indicated that on Aug. 31, 2016, then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe sought permission from then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates to scour all eight thumb drives for evidence of possible Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Three weeks later, McCabe had the first of two meetings with Yates, White House Counsel W. Neil Eggleston, and others. At those meetings, and in an email dated Sept. 30, 2016, Eggleston expressed concerns that, according to the OIG investigators, the FBI’s request to review the thumb drives “was overly broad and did not include sufficient protection for privileged material.”
FBI witnesses said that the Bureau “did not raise the issue again with EoP given the focus in October and November 2016 on the investigation into Russian election interference” and other issues.
In short, something smells. Either the FBI witnesses had circuitous logic, or senior Obama administration officials lied through their teeth.
Consider: McCabe sought access to all eight thumb drives to search for information pertaining to Russia and the 2016 election.
Then, after meeting with the White House counsel, McCabe “did not raise the issue again” because — one scratches one’s head — the FBI decided to focus on Russia and the 2016 election.
It makes no sense, which leaves one grasping for alternate explanations.
One such explanation, of course, involves the contents of Obama’s emails. What did he send to Clinton on her private email server? Perhaps it was nothing.
Thanks to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, however, we already know that Obama directed what appears to have been a “treasonous conspiracy” in 2016. Indeed, declassified documents showed that Obama and senior officials in his administration “manufactured intelligence” to support the Russia collusion hoax, by which they hoped to “undermine” incoming President Donald Trump’s first administration.
Whatever the actual contents of Obama’s emails, therefore, the former president does not receive the benefit of the doubt.
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