The Conservative Treehouse reported yesterday that James Comey drafted his conclusions in the Clinton email server investigation before he interviewed the witnesses. Wow! The man is obviously clairvoyant–he knew exactly what their testimony would be and didn’t need to hear it. Well, not quite.
The article includes the following:
In a letter from Senator Chuck Grassley to new FBI Director Christopher Wray (full pdf below) the senator outlines some disturbing information discovered in documents reviewed by the judicial committee.
Chief among the issues was a discovery that fired FBI Director James Comey had already drafted a preliminary conclusion that Hillary Clinton was not going to be held responsible; the FBI Director’s position was created in April and May 2016 before sixteen key investigative witnesses, including Mrs. Clinton herself, were even interviewed.
I may be missing something here, but if Hillary Clinton was not responsible for setting up and using her private email server, who was?
Senator Grassley’s letter includes the following:
As of early May 2016, the FBI had not yet interviewed Secretary Clinton. Moreover, it had yet to finish interviewing sixteen other key witnesses, including Cheryl Mills, Bryan Pagliano, Heather Samuelson, Justin Cooper, and John Bentel.
These individuals had intimate and personal knowledge relating to Secretary Clinton’s
non-government server, including helping her build and administer the device. Yet, it appears that the following key FBI interviews had not yet occurred when Mr. Corney began drafting his exoneration statement:
1. May 3, 2016 – Paul Combetta 9. June 10, 2016 – John Bentel
2. May 12, 2016- Sean Misko 10. June 15, 2016 – Lewis Lukens
3. May 17, 2016- Unnamed CIA 11. June 21, 2016 – Justin Cooper
employee 5 12. June 21, 2016- Unnamed State
4. May 19, 2016- Unnamed CIA Dept. Employee 7
employee 6 13. June 21, 2016 – Bryan Pagliano
5. May 24, 2016 – Heather Samuelson 14. June 21, 2016 – Purcell Lee
6. May 26, 2016 – Marcel Lehel (aka 15. June 23, 2016-Monica Hanley
Guccifer) 16. June 29, 2016 – Hannah Richert
7. May 28, 2016 – Cheryl Mills 17. July 2, 2016 – Hillary Clinton
8. June 3, 2016- Charlie Wisecarver
Conclusion first, fact-gathering second-that’s no way to run an investigation. The FBI should be held to a higher standard than that, especially in a matter of such great public interest and controversy.
Mr. Corney’s final statement acknowledged “there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information” but nonetheless cleared Secretary Clinton because he claimed there was no intent or obstruction of justice. Yet, evidence of destruction of emails known to be under subpoena by the House of Representatives, and subject to congressional preservation requests, was obtained in interviews around the time that Mr. Corney began drafting his exoneration statement. Moreover, the Justice Department entered into highly unusual immunity agreements with Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson in June 2016-after Mr. Corney began drafting his exoneration statement-to review Clinton email archives on their laptops.
This is the swamp. The only way to get rid of it is to fill Congress with honest people who are not currently involved in Washington politics. There are probably about ten members of Congress that are not part of the swamp. They deserve to be re-elected. All the others need to be sent packing at the earliest possible opportunity. Director Mueller needs to be fired, former Director Comey needs to be investigated and possibly jailed, and the FBI needs to be cleaned out and redone.