An FBI timeline memorandum written in 2017 shows that the Obama administration’s deputy attorney general, Sally Yates, quashed a probe of the Clinton Foundation to determine whether it profited from foreign donations when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state.
Top FBI officials and the Obama Justice Department discouraged FBI agents in three cities from probing the foundation and its donors, which were the subject of an explosive best-selling book, a major piece in The New York Times, and yet another by the Associated Press.
First published by Just the News, the trouble that agents had when trying to investigate Clinton contrasts with the ease with which the FBI unleashed Crossfire Hurricane, the probe into Trump’s so-called collusion with Russia to defeat Clinton. Clinton’s campaign, of course, concocted the collusion hoax, which was pushed ahead by the Obama administration’s intelligence agencies — to destroy Trump.
The book that first exposed the Clinton Foundation’s shady dealings was Clinton Cash, by Peter Schweizer.
Schweizer revealed payments to the foundation when Hillary Clinton was the nation’s top diplomat. That was an apparent violation of an ethics agreement she and henpecked husband Bill signed before she took the job.
When Schweizer’s book appeared in 2015, The New York Times followed up on its claims about the Clinton Mafia. One of its most suspicious dealings involved a Russian company called Uranium One. Formerly a Canadian outfit, it had holdings in the American West.
“As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation,” the Times reported:
Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.
And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.
The deal gave Russia control of 20 percent of American uranium production.
But that wasn’t all.
In August 2016, more bad news surfaced for Clinton — aside from the scandal surrounding her unlawful use of a private server to email classified information.
“More than half the people outside the government who met with Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state gave money — either personally or through companies or groups — to the Clinton Foundation,” The Associated Press reported:
It’s an extraordinary proportion indicating her possible ethics challenges if elected president.
At least 85 of 154 people from private interests who met or had phone conversations scheduled with Clinton while she led the State Department donated to her family charity or pledged commitments to its international programs.… Combined, the 85 donors contributed as much as $156 million. At least 40 donated more than $100,000 each, and 20 gave more than $1 million.
Donors who were granted time with Clinton included an internationally known economist who asked for her help as the Bangladesh government pressured him to resign from a nonprofit bank he ran; a Wall Street executive who sought Clinton’s help with a visa problem; and Estee Lauder executives who were listed as meeting with Clinton while her department worked with the firm’s corporate charity to counter gender-based violence in South Africa.
AP claimed the meetings between Clinton and donors did not violate the ethics agreement, but did suggest that a fat check to the foundation would buy a meeting with her.
Thus did all that money and what it paid for come under the FBI’s microscope. For the foundation, after all, solicited donations from those with “business before her department,” as Just the News reported. The timeline shows “that both the DOJ and former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe placed significant impediments in front of agents who believed they had evidence to justify a public integrity criminal case.”
In February 2016, the timeline shows, McCabe ordered “no overt investigative steps” regarding the foundation “without his approval.”
A timeline entry from March 2016 shows just how concerned the Obama administration clearly was, given what a probe and its result might mean for Clinton’s shot at the White House:
Possibly March, unknown exact date, [Eastern District Arkansas] informed [FBI Little Rock] that Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, DOJ, ordered EADR [U.S. Attorney’s Office] to “shut it down,” [Redacted] notified former [redacted] and [redacted] [redacted] and [redacted] did not have any follow-up conversations with EDAR USAO regarding DAG Yates’s order to “shut it down.”
Thus ended an effort to uncover Clinton’s activities by officials in three cities: New York, Little Rock, and Washington, D.C.
As Just the News observed, McCabe rose from assistant director of the FBI’s field office in Washington, D.C., to deputy director of the bureau under Director James Comey.
“The Justice Department inspector general said he ‘had an active role in the supervision of the Midyear [Clinton emails] investigation, and oversight of the Clinton Foundation investigation, until he recused himself from these investigations on November 1, 2016’ — just days before the election,” Just the News noted:
By that time, most political fallout against Hillary Clinton from the FBI’s probes had been neutralized.
Inspector General [Michael] Horowitz noted that his investigation “found that McCabe did not fully comply with this recusal in a few instances related to the Clinton Foundation investigation.”
No matter where agents turned to get support to investigate Clinton’s alleged corruption, they were thwarted, the memo … reveals.
In 2019, McCabe famously detailed for 60 Minutes the effort inside the Justice Department to remove Trump from office. Officials planned to use the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, a move leftist legal celebrity Alan Dershowitz called a coup attempt.
As well, McCabe was among the officials who hid information from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court when the bureau sought a wiretap on Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
Then Attorney General Jeff Session fired McCabe after the bureau’s inspector general reported that he lied to Comey, other agents, and the IG about leaks to The Wall Street Journal.