A Republic Under Assault Page 15

  August 15, 2016: In a text message exchange on August 15, 2016, Strzok told Page, “I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office—that there’s no way he gets elected—but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.…” The “Andy” referred to in the text message appears to be FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe.

  The IG pretends that all this is not evidence that the Clinton and Trump investigations were compromised by political bias. The rest of us will believe our own eyes.

  But even the IG couldn’t rule out bias in the handling of the infamous “Weiner laptop.” Anthony Weiner, Huma Abedin’s then-husband who was convicted on sex charges, had a laptop that was found by local and New York FBI law enforcement to contain a trove of emails from the Clinton email server. How? Because Huma Abedin was the only other State Department employee to have an account on the Clinton email server and she evidently used her husband’s laptop to access the server.

  Despite being alerted to this new trove in September 2016, Strzok, who was by then full into the fabulist Russia allegations against Trump, couldn’t be bothered to subpoena and investigate the issue until a month later. Comey then alerted Congress only after leaks of the find were threatened!

  Judicial Watch seems to be the only entity seriously investigating the Page-Strzok issue and is in court now seeking (and slowly getting) all their releasable emails and texts. The FBI has been slow-rolling the release of these documents in an unconscionable way and is still withholding all text messages (protesting they are not covered by FOIA). The emails show the corruption infecting the upper levels at the FBI and help explain why the agency has been slowing their release (so slow that we may not get everything due to us until 2022!). One of the many remarkable finds from the Page-Strzok emails include Strzok’s “weiner timeline.”2

  On November 3, 2016, Strzok sends an email to Page with a “Weiner timeline.” The document shows that on September 28, 2016, the assistant director in charge (ADIC) of the New York Office of the FBI reported “potential MYE-related material,” referring to Midyear Exam, which was the code name of the FBI’s Clinton email investigation. The timeline shows that not until October 30, almost a month after the discovery, was a search warrant for the emails obtained:

  09/26/2016 NYO [New York Office] obtains SW [search warrant] for Weiner laptop

  09/28/2016 ADIC NY notes potential MYE-related material following weekly SAC [Special Agent in Charge] SVTC [Secure Video Teleconference]

  09/29/2016 Conference call between NYO and MYE team

  NYO notes processing is crashing system and not complete, but during troubleshooting observes material potentially related to MYE (clintonemail.com and state.gov domains) seen during course of review

  No numbers/volume available

  Discussion about ability to search for material determines such activity would be outside scope of warrant

  Request to NYO to gather basic facts (numbers, domains, etc.) based on their review

  Approx. 10/19/2016 NYO completes carving

  NYO observes SBU [Sensitive but Unclassified] attachment

  10/21/2016 6:00 PM DOJ/NSD advises MYE leadership that SDNY informed them of MYE-related media on Weiner media

  10/25/2016 DOJ-DD conversation re material

  10/26/2016 DOJ-MYE-NYO conference call

  DD advised of results of call with MYE team conclusion material should be looked at; DD directs briefing to D

  10/27/2016 Briefing to D; D concurs with conducting investigation to obtain data

  10/30/2016 SW [search warrant] sworn out at SDNY

  Copy of media obtained by MYE SAs [Special Agents], entered into evidence, and provided to OTD [Operational Technology Division] for processing

  (Emphasis added)

  Again, the IG report suggested possible bias by Strzok: “[W]e did not have confidence that Strzok’s decision to prioritize the Russia investigation over following up on the Midyear-related investigative lead discovered on the Weiner laptop was free from bias.”

  These new records show how Hillary Clinton was protected from investigation over the Weiner laptop by the FBI for a full month during the presidential campaign.

  We also know from separate Judicial Watch litigation that the Weiner laptop contained emails and classified material that Hillary Clinton had destroyed or otherwise withheld from government investigators and the American people.

  Reportedly, only 3,077 of the more than 300,000 emails found on the Weiner laptop “were directly reviewed3 for classified or incriminating information. Three FBI officials completed that work in a single 12-hour spurt the day before Comey again cleared Clinton of criminal charges” on November 6, 2016.4

  The numbers of emails alleged to be on the laptop has been hard to pin down, though a top FBI official recently testified in writing to Judicial Watch that the FBI reviewed 48,982 emails as a result of the delayed warrant for Clinton email account information from the laptop of Anthony Weiner. (Though other information suggest the emails could have been in the hundreds of thousands. We’ve been unable to resolve the discrepancy.)

  Throughout litigation, we forced the State Department and FBI to turn over to us government-related emails from the Clinton emails found on the Weiner laptop.

  What we uncovered is shocking. There were at least eighteen classified emails on Weiner’s laptop and the State Department was forced to turn over numerous emails that Hillary Clinton had tried to delete or hide from the American people. In other words, many emails she tried to delete or hide were on Anthony Weiner’s laptop!

  The 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.5

  On two occasions, classified material was sent by Abedin on her clintonemail.com account to Weiner’s laptop (sent to “Anthony Campaign”) on November 25, 2010. The email discusses an upcoming call with Prince Saud of “expected WikiLeaks leaks.” Abedin sent classified information the following day to Weiner’s laptop concerning a call that “Jeff” (presumably then–U.S. assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs Jeffrey Feltman) had with United Arab Emirates prime minister Abdullah bin Zayed.

  The Weiner laptop also contains classified material from Abedin’s BlackBerry. A July 9, 2011, email contained classified information regarding a then-upcoming call between Clinton and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. On November 25, 2011, classified information was sent regarding Feltman’s notes on the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs impression of the Hamas–Palestine Liberation Organization talks.

  The classified information on Weiner’s laptop is part of a pattern of mishandling national security material by Clinton and her aides. The Weiner emails emphasize the need for the Justice Department to conduct a fresh, serious investigation of Hillary Clinton’s and Huma Abedin’s obvious violations of law.

  The Strzok-Page material also has a surfeit of information on cover-ups and corruption:

  The emails show that Clinton apologized to the FBI over her email abuses, but that apology was not in the FBI 302 report documenting her interview.6 Strzok’s August 2016 email says:

  Though not in the 302, at the end of the interview she apologized for the work and effort it created for the FBI. She said words to the effect of, I’m sorry this has caused so much work and expenditure of resources by the FBI. I chose to use my own server out of convenience; it proved to be anything but.

  So now we have confirmation that the FBI report of Clinton’s “interview” is incomplete—incomplete in a way, of course, that inured to her benefit? What else did Strzok leave out of the Clinton interview? Other finds include:

  Strzok-Page emails that confirm what many suspected—that special accommodations were given to the lawyers of Clinton and her aides during the investigation of her email controversy. Additionally, in November 2019, Judi
cial Watch uncovered Strzok-Page emails7 showing the attorney representing three of Clinton’s aides met with senior FBI officials.

  DOJ records showing that, after Clinton’s statement8 denying the transmission of classified information over her unsecure email system, Strzok sent an email to FBI officials citing “three [Clinton email] chains” containing (C) [classified] portion marks in front of paragraphs.9

  Records that show that then–FBI general counsel James Baker instructed FBI officials to expedite the release10 of FBI investigative material to Hillary Clinton’s lawyer, David Kendall, in August 2016. Kendall and the FBI’s top lawyer discussed specifically quickly obtaining the FBI’s 302 report of its interview with Clinton.11

  CLINTON FOUNDATION PAY-TO-PLAY SCHEME EXPOSED—AT THE CLINTON STATE DEPARTMENT

  Huma Abedin, who, in 2016, along with many other top Clinton State officials who testified to my Judicial Watch attorney colleagues as part of one of our FOIA lawsuits, admitted it was Clinton’s decision to use her non-state.gov email; that to her knowledge only Hillary Clinton, Abedin, and Chelsea Clinton had accounts on the clintonemail.com system; and that the clintonemail.com system may have interfered with Mrs. Clinton’s ability to do her job. Abedin also testified that the reason she had an email account on the Clinton server was so that she could use it for Clinton family matters. Well, it turns out that Abedin’s idea of family matters was to use the Clinton email system for government work (which meant more classified info mishandling) and to allow her to facilitate the pay-to-play operation involving the Clinton Foundation.

  Once again, it was your friendly neighborhood Judicial Watch that had to do the legwork to ask for and then sue for the Abedin email cache. What we found may have been the death knell for Clinton’s presidential ambitions.

  The Obama State Department had accessed the Abedin emails in 2015 but slow-rolled the release of the material to us in the late summer of 2016.

  The Clinton obstruction, designed to hide from us her every email about her conduct at State, collapsed against Judicial Watch’s relentless litigation at the worst possible moment—just a few months before Election Day.

  In August 2016, we uncovered emails that showed cash for favors at the Clinton State Department. They were simply extraordinary. We knew that Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton had already leveraged State, lining their pockets with up to $48 million in personal speaking fees. But now we had evidence that she used the State Department to take care of donors to the Clinton Foundation, their personal and political platform used to support her aspirations to the presidency. I testified for Judicial Watch to Congress in one of the last major hearings the House Republicans held before they turned over the keys to Democrats in 2019:

  It is no secret Judicial Watch has had longstanding concerns with the Clintons’ ethics and respect for the rule of law. So, it was with some skepticism that we greeted Hillary Clinton’s promises ten years ago to avoid conflicts of interest with her Foundation and her husband’s business activities as Secretary of State.

  At the time,12 even CNN reported that Bill Clinton’s “complicated global business interests could present future conflicts of interest that result in unneeded headaches for the incoming commander-in-chief.”

  To reassure President Obama and senators of both parties that she would be above reproach, Mrs. Clinton sent a January 5, 2009, letter13 to State Department designated agency ethics official James H. Thessin, stating:

  For the duration of my appointment as Secretary if I am confirmed, I will not participate personally and substantially in any particular matter involving specific parties in which The William J. Clinton Foundation (or the Clinton Global Initiative) is a party or represents a party.…

  What a crock that promise turned out to be.14

  Our headline-making disclosures in August 2016 included documents showing that in April 2009 controversial Clinton Foundation official Doug Band pushed for a job for an associate. In the email Band tells Hillary Clinton’s former aides at the State Department, Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin, that it is “important to take care of [Redacted]. Band is reassured by Abedin that “Personnel has been sending him options.” Band was cofounder of Teneo Strategy15 with Bill Clinton and a top official of the Clinton Foundation, including its Clinton Global Initiative.

  Included in that document production was a 2009 email in which Band directs Abedin and Mills to put Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire and Clinton Foundation donor Gilbert Chagoury in touch with the State Department’s “substance person” on Lebanon. Band notes that Chagoury is a “key guy there [Lebanon] and to us,” and insists that Abedin call Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman to connect him to Chagoury.

  Chagoury16 is a close friend of former president Bill Clinton and a top donor to the Clinton Foundation. He has appeared near the top of the foundation’s donor list as a $1 million to $5 million contributor, according to foundation documents.17 He also pledged18 $1 billion to the Clinton Global Initiative.19 According to a 2010 investigation20 by PBS’s Frontline, Chagoury was convicted21 in 2000 in Switzerland for laundering money from Nigeria, but agreed to a plea deal and repaid $66 million to the Nigerian government.

  You can see that the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton State Department almost immediately broke promises to President Obama and the Senate to maintain a wall of separation between the foundation and State.

  Judicial Watch has since uncovered many other instances of seeming pay-to-play and favoritism for the Clinton Foundation at the Clinton State Department.

  Steve Bing/Shangri-La Entertainment: On July 16, 2009, Shangri-La Entertainment executive Zachary Schwartz asked Clinton Foundation official Doug Band for help reversing the State Department’s denial of a travel visa to Cuba. Band sent the request to Huma Abedin, writing, “please call [Schwartz] asap on this… Important.” Abedin responded that she would call him. Media reports indicate that two weeks later, Shangri-La owner Steve Bing’s team was in Cuba. Bing is a longtime Clinton friend and donor and is listed as having donated between $10 million and $25 million to the foundation. His construction company, Shangri-La Industries, paid Bill Clinton $2.5 million from 2009 to 2010 to serve as an advisor.

  Crown Prince Salman of Bahrain: A Judicial Watch–obtained Huma Abedin–Doug Band email exchange from 2009 revealed that Crown Prince Salman of Bahrain requested a meeting with Secretary of State Clinton but was forced to go through the Clinton Foundation for an appointment. Abedin advised Band that when she went through “normal channels” at State, Clinton declined to meet. After Band intervened, however, the meeting was set up within forty-eight hours. According to the Clinton Foundation website, in 2005 Salman committed to establishing the Crown Prince’s International Scholarship Program (CPISP) for the Clinton Global Initiative. And by 2010, it had spent $32 million in conjunction with CGI. The Kingdom of Bahrain reportedly gave between $50,000 and $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation. And Bahrain Petroleum also gave an additional $25,000 to $50,000.”

  Wolverhampton Football Club: In another Judicial Watch–obtained an Abedin-Band email exchange from May 2009, Band urged Abedin to get the Clinton State Department to intervene in order to obtain a visa for members of the Wolverhampton (UK) Football Club, one of whose members was apparently having difficulty because of a “criminal charge.” Band was acting at the behest of Casey Wasserman, a millionaire Hollywood sports entertainment executive and president of the Wasserman Foundation. Wasserman had donated between $5 million and $10 million to the Clinton Foundation through the Wasserman Foundation.

  Slimfast founder Danny Abraham: A May 2009 Abedin-Band email reveals that Slimfast tycoon S. Daniel Abraham was granted almost immediate access to then–secretary of state Clinton, with Abedin serving as the facilitator. According to the Clinton Foundation website, Abraham, like the Wasserman Foundation, has given between $5 million and $10 million to the Clinton Foundation. The emails indicate that Abraham was granted almost immediate access to Clinton upon request.

  Coal industry lobby
ist Joyce Aboussie: Another record reveals that in June 2009, prominent St. Louis political power broker Joyce Aboussie exchanged a series of insistent emails with Abedin concerning Aboussie’s efforts to set up a meeting between Clinton and Peabody Energy vice president Cartan Sumner. Aboussie wrote, “Huma, I need your help now to intervene please. We need this meeting with Secretary Clinton, who has been there now for nearly six months. This is, by the way, my first request. I really would appreciate your help on this. It should go without saying that the Peabody folks came to Dick [Gephardt] and I because of our relationship with the Clinton’s. [sic]” After further notes from Aboussie, Abedin responded, “We are working on it and I hope we can make something work… we have to work through the beauracracy [sic] here.” Aboussie donated between $100,000 and $250,000 to the Clinton Foundation.

  It was hard to tell, in light of all this evidence, where the Clinton State Department ended and where the Clinton Foundation began.

  I recall reporters asking how and if we timed the disclosures. I explained that the timing of the disclosures was a consequence of Hillary Clinton’s cover-up! If the emails had been disclosed as required under law and not hidden by her, these emails could have emerged years earlier. And, again, the Obama State Department had the emails for a year but only turned them over to us just before the elections.

  Our work on the Clinton email and her foundation corruption issues led to another FBI investigation/non-investigation of Clinton Inc. And it also led to the exposure of yet more corruption at the top levels of the Obama FBI.

  ANDREW MCCABE—CLINTON’S ACE IN THE HOLE?

  Judicial Watch, once again, did the heavy lifting to expose the truth about Obama deputy FBI director McCabe’s conflicts of interest on the Clinton and Trump investigations with a series of FOIA lawsuits to get the truth. McCabe’s conflicts and related leaks and lies were the subject of yet another DOJ inspector general report that, once again, seemed to follow our lead!