In her Wall Street Journal newsletter this week, Kim Strassel summarizes the week’s Russia hoax revelations before coming to “The FBI and the Clinton probe.” Here is her summary:
If all this [Russia hoax material] isn’t snaky enough, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley on Monday released declassified documents related to the FBI’s embarrassing 2016 investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s private email server, which infamously culminated in Mr. Comey’s decision to sideline his boss, Ms. Lynch, and give a surreal press conference in which he laid out how Mrs. Clinton broke law before declining to prosecute her. The Grassley documents—a declassified portion of an inspector general report into the probe—shed further light on how haphazard the probe was throughout. One example: the bureau failed to examine numerous thumb drives provided by a source that contained information hacked from the U.S. agencies, including the State Department (which Mrs. Clinton headed up). An obvious step would have been to see if sensitive files from the Clinton server ended up on the thumb-drives. The documents show the FBI initially viewed the thumb-drive review as “necessary,” but later dropped it, having decided that nothing short of proof that Mrs. Clinton had initially created her server with ill intent would result in a prosecution.
She adds this under the heading “More ‘defensive” briefings”:
The declassified docs also show the FBI came into possession of intelligence that claimed Ms. Lynch and other Democratic operators were using their power to try to squelch the Clinton investigation and help her win the election. Top FBI officials merely shrugged off the allegations off as “not credible.” Yet Mr. Comey would go on to claim the intel was among his reasons to sideline Ms. Lynch and unilaterally make his decision to exonerate Mrs. Clinton. As Mr. Grassley summed up: “The Comey FBI’s negligent approach and perhaps intentional lack of effort in the Clinton investigation is a stark contrast to its full-throated investigation of the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, which was based on the uncorroborated and now discredited Steele dossier. Comey’s decision-making process smacks of political infection.”
Senator Grassley’s comment seems a tad understated, but he continues to dredge up the documents on which we can form our own judgement.
