A conservative watchdog group announced Friday it had filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Justice Department seeking communications records that relate the FBI’s investigation into whether Hillary and Bill Clinton’s charity organization participated in pay-to-play schemes or other improper behavior with the U.S. government.
The latest lawsuit by Judicial Watch related to the Clintons, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the FBI denied their FOIA request and appeal this fall, targets the offices of prominent Obama-era officials, including former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, former FBI Director James Comey, and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
Specifically, Judicial Watch demands the DOJ do a search, and “demonstrate that it employed search methods reasonably likely to lead to the discovery,” for “[a]ll records of communication, including but not limited to e-mails (whether sent or received on .gov or non-.gov e-mail accounts), text messages, or instant chats, sent between officials in the offices of the FBI Director, Deputy Director and General Counsel on the one hand, and officials in the offices of the Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General and or Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General on the other hand, regarding the closure or possible closure of an investigation into the Clinton Foundation.”
The time frame of Judicial Watch’s request spans from Jan. 1, 2016, to Dec. 31, 2016, a time when Lynch, Comey, and McCabe all had still been in office.
The Justice Department declined to comment.
In early 2016 it was reported that the FBI expanded its investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s unauthorized email server to include whether public corruption laws were violated, looking at Clinton Foundation donations followed by State Department contracts. By October of that year, the Washington Post reported that the DOJ’s public integrity unit said it didn’t have enough evidence to continue the investigation. The Clinton camp and the foundation have previously denied participation in any pay-to-play activities.
Still, a new investigation reportedly began in January of this year, but no developments have since come to light.
In a press release, Judicial Watch pointed to a number of suspicious instances that could be indicative of pay-to-play. One related to Douglas Band, a longtime Clinton aide who then served in a top role at the Clinton Foundation and wrote Huma Abedin, Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, in April 2009 to demand a major Clinton Foundation donor be given access to the State Department’s “substance person” on Lebanon.
The watchdog also singled out the DOJ inspector general’s report released in April in which McCabe described a “very dramatic” call he had with another high-level department official about the handling of the Clinton Foundation probe. That same inspector general’s report, which led to McCabe’s firing, found McCabe “lacked candor” on four separate occasions, including three times while under oath, in connection with the disclosure to the Wall Street Journal leak to push back on a report about large donations McCabe’s wife received from Democrats during her bid for the Virginia state Senate — a leak that effectively confirmed the existence of the Clinton Foundation probe.
“The record shows the Obama Justice Department suppressed a public corruption investigation into the Clinton Foundation,” Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said in a statement. “It’s time for the DOJ to stop shielding the Clintons and produce records on this miscarriage of justice.”
