Remember when Obama’s second crooked AG, Loretta Lynch, had a “spontaneous” meeting on a tarmac in Arizona, with the husband of the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate only months before the general election? Doesn’t the American public have the right to know what really took place in that meeting? Doesn’t Congress have the right to know if Loretta Lynch interfered with the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email investigation “matter” while she was running for the highest office in our nation?
Real Clear Investigations reports- The FBI had little problem leaking “unverified” dirt from Russian sources on Donald Trump and his campaign aides – and even basing FISA wiretaps on it. But according to the Justice Department’s inspector general, the bureau is refusing to allow even members of Congress with top security clearance to see intercepted material alleging political interference by President Obama’s attorney general, Loretta Lynch.
That material – which has been outlined in press reports – consists of unverified accounts intercepted from putative Russian sources in which the head of the Democratic National Committee allegedly implicates the Hillary Clinton campaign and Lynch in a secret deal to fix the Clinton email investigation.
“It is remarkable how this Justice Department is protecting the corruption of the Obama Justice Department,” said Tom Fitton, president of Washington-based watchdog Judicial Watch, which is suing for the material.
Lynch and Clinton officials as well as the DNC chairman at the time, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, have denied the allegations and characterized them as Russian disinformation.
True or false, the material is consequential because it appears to have influenced former FBI Director James B. Comey’s decision to break with bureau protocols because he didn’t trust Lynch. In his recent book, Comey said he took the reins in the Clinton email probe, announcing Clinton should not be indicted, because of a “development still unknown to the American public” that “cast serious doubt” on Lynch’s credibility – clearly the intercepted material.
If the material documents an authentic exchange between Lynch and a Clinton aide, it would appear to be strong evidence that the Obama administration put partisan political considerations ahead of its duty to enforce the law.
If the material is a fabrication, it may constitute the most fruitful effort by the Russians to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. For if Comey had not gone around Lynch and given his July 2016 press conference clearing Clinton, he almost certainly would not have publicly announced the reopening for the case just prior to the election – an event Clinton and her allies blame for her surprising loss to Trump.
The information remains so secret that Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz had to censor it from his recently released 500-plus-page report on the FBI’s investigation of Clinton, and even withhold it from Congress.
Paul Sperry of the New York Post reports: Although it was not reported, IG Horowitz’s report on “A Review of Various Actions by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Justice in Advance of the 2016 Election” contained two Appendices and the second Appendix was totally redacted and left out of the report.
When former Attorney General Loretta Lynch testified last year about her decision not to prosecute Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified information, she swore she never talked to “anyone” on the Clinton campaign. That categorical denial, though made in response to a series of questions about whether she spoke with Clintonworld about remaining attorney general if Hillary won the election, could come back to haunt her.
During the House Judiciary hearing, Rep. David Trott (R-Mich.) slammed Lynch for failing to recuse herself from the Clinton investigation despite meeting privately with the target’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, a week before the then-attorney general let Hillary skate. Then, referring to rumors of her possibly staying on in a hypothetical Hillary administration, he asked if Lynch had met with anyone on Hillary’s staff during the yearlong investigation, to which she replied: “I have not spoken to anyone on either the campaign or transition or any staff members affiliated with them.”
The committee, however, now knows of a document obtained by the FBI reportedly showing a Democratic operative’s claim that Lynch had privately assured Renteria that the Justice Department “would not push too deeply” into the investigation of Clinton’s private email server, which contained top secret information from the State Department.
The contents of the secret intelligence document — which purport to show that Lynch informed the Clinton campaign she’d make sure the FBI didn’t push too hard — were included in the inspector general’s original draft. But in the official IG report issued June 14, the information was tucked into a classified appendix to the report and entirely blanked out.
“The information was classified at such a high level by the intelligence community that it limited even the members [of Congress] who can see it, as well as the staffs,” Horowitz explained last week to annoyed Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has oversight authority over Justice and the FBI.
He said he has asked Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray to work with the CIA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence to determine if the material can be rewritten to allow congressional oversight. Once the material is appropriately redacted, including protecting alleged “sources and methods,” Horowitz said, he hopes members can then go to the “tank,” or secure reading room in the basement of the Capitol Building, and read it.
“We very much want the committee to see this information,” Horowitz said.
Congressional sources told RealClearInvestigations the material is classified “TS/SCI,” which stands for Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information.
Such security precautions were not taken with the Steele dossier, which alleges corruption within the Trump campaign. Although the FBI and CIA used it as both an investigative and intelligence resource, its contents were readily shared with Congress and widely leaked to the media.
The dossier formed the basis for warrants to spy on the Trump campaign and is being used by the Special Counsel Robert Mueller as a roadmap in his continuing investigation into possible Trump ties to Russia.
