The FBI investigated Hillary Clinton’s unusual private email setup for months, and ultimately decided not to recommend criminal charges against the former secretary of state. Since then, the bureau has not exactly covered itself in glory.
ISIS sympathizer Omar Mateen killed 49 people and wounded dozens at a gay nightclub in Orlando after the FBI interviewed him multiple times on suspicion of terrorist activity. The FBI then fought a legal battle with journalists over the release of underrated transcripts of Mateen’s 911 call, in which the killer expressed a deep familiarity with the organizational structure of ISIS.
The FBI had also previously investigated Ahmad Rahami, the prime suspect in a series of attempted bombings in New York City earlier this month, after his father contacted the bureau in 2014 warning them to “keep an eye” on his son, whom he suspected of harboring terrorist sympathies.
The bureau continues to take heat for its action in the Hillary Clinton email investigation, especially in light of revelations that the FBI granted broad immunity agreements to members of Clinton’s inner circle and to the those who helped who set up her secret email server.
Rep. Darrell Issa skewered FBI Director James Comey on Wednesday during a hearing on Capitol Hill. Issa revealed that the Department of Justice appeared to have granted broad immunity to Hillary Clinton top aide Cheryl Mills, who also served as Clinton’s personal attorney and repeatedly claimed attorney-client privilege to avoid answering questions during the investigation.
Issa claim that, according to confidential government documents, the DOJ had granted Mills a broad immunity deal that would protect her against charges related to the retention of classified information and the destruction of sensitive government documents. Comey was unable provide an explanation, only saying that the DOJ would have to provide more details on the matter.
Comey was also unable to answer lawmakers’ questions regarding reports that Hillary’s private email technician, Paul Combetta, who was also granted immunity by the DOJ, had asked a Reddit forum for help stripping out the email address of a “VERY VIP” individual. Here is Combetta’s post, dated July 14, 2014, just days after Congress issued subpoena’s to obtain emails sent and received over Hillary’s secret server:
I may be facing a very interesting situation where I need to strip out a VIP’s (VERY VIP) email address from a bunch of archived email that I have both in a live Exchange mailbox, as well as a PST file. Basically, they don’t want the VIP’s email address exposed to anyone, and want to be able to either strip out or replace the email address in the to/from fields in all of the emails we want to send out.
Combetta recently deleted the post, but many questions remain. At one point during the hearing, Comey became emotional while defending the FBI’s integrity. “You can call us wrong, but don’t call us weasels. We are not weasels,” he told member of Congress. “We are honest people and … whether or not you agree with the result, this was done the way you want it to be done.”
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