Emails obtained by a conservative watchdog show the frantic series of events that transpired at the FBI after then-FBI Director James Comey informed Congress in October 2016 that his bureau was reopening an investigation into the former secretary of state’s use of a private email server.
Hours after Comey sent a letter to Congress on Oct. 28 informing lawmakers the probe he shut down that summer was getting news life less than two weeks before the presidential election, Clinton’s lawyer, David Kendall, emailed former FBI General Counsel James Baker to demand a call “ASAP.”
Baker told colleagues he spoke to Kendall, who he said complained Comey’s letter was “tantalizingly ambiguous” and made statements that were “inchoate and highly ominous,” according to an email thread released by Judicial Watch.
The note was forwarded to several top FBI officials, including Comey. The emails also show soon after a conference call was set up by Peter Strzok, the infamous ex-FBI agent who exchanged anti-Trump text messages with FBI lawyer Lisa Page and has fueled concern among GOP lawmakers that there is rampant bias in the FBI.
The FBI closed the inquiry again just days before the election took place, with Comey maintaining the same position he asserted in July 2016: that his agency would not recommend criminal charges against anyone involved with Clinton’s private email network, even after finding that Clinton’s team was “extremely careless” in handling classified emails.
[Related: Comey: FBI wanted to make case against Clinton. There was just one problem.]
Still, the FBI’s handling of Clinton’s email investigation led to Clinton and her allies to blame Comey, in part, for contributing to her 2016 defeat. Comey was fired as FBI director by President Trump in May 2017.
The emails were obtained in response to a May 21 order in a January 2018 Freedom of Information Act lawsuit stemming from a request to records from Strzok and Page.
“It is big news that, just days before the presidential election, Hillary Clinton’s personal lawyer pressured the top lawyer for the FBI on the infamous Weiner laptop emails,” Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said in a statement. “These documents further underscore that the fix was in for Hillary Clinton. When will the Justice Department and FBI finally do an honest investigation of the Clinton email scandal?”
The FBI declined to comment.
The watchdog group recently scored a separate legal victory when a federal judge ruled former Obama administration officials must answer written questions under oath about the 2012 Benghazi terror attacks in Libya as part of a court-ordered discovery related to former Clinton’s unauthorized email server. Former national security adviser Susan Rice and former deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes are among those ex-officials required to answer questions.
