The Inspector General’s report on Andrew McCabe has opened a Pandora’s Box on attempts by intel officials within the Department of Justice who tried to influence an ongoing investigation into the Clinton Foundation. You really can’t make this stuff up! The focus is on an August 2016 phone call from a high-ranking Justice Department official who Mr. McCabe thought was trying to shut down the FBI’s probe into the Clinton Foundation at a time when Hillary Clinton was running for president. No kidding! It’s amazing just how politicized the government intel agencies have become. It seems like every day there’s another crooked former Obama administration official or an intel agency slime ball being exposed…
The report says that a DOJ official was “very pissed off” at the FBI and demanded to know why the FBI was still pursuing the Clinton Foundation when the Justice Department considered the case dormant.
ROGUE DOJ PHONE CALL:
Former FBI officials said the fact that a call was made is even more stunning than its content.
James Wedick, conducted corruption investigations at the bureau, said during 35 years there he never fielded a call from the Justice Department about any of his cases. He said it suggested interference.
“It is bizarre – and that word can’t be used enough – to have the Justice Department call the FBI’s deputy director and try to influence the outcome of an active corruption investigation,” he said. “They can have some input, but they shouldn’t be operationally in control like it appears they were from this call.”
Although the inspector general report did not identify the official, sources at both former FBI and Justice Department officials identified him as Matthew Axelrod, who was the principal associate deputy attorney general — the title the IG report did use.
As it was, Mr. McCabe thought the call was out of bounds.
He told the inspector general that during the Aug. 12, 2016, call the principal associate deputy attorney general expressed concerns about FBI agents taking overt steps in the Clinton Foundation investigation during the presidential campaign.
“According to McCabe, he pushed back, asking ‘are you telling me that I need to shut down a validly predicated investigation?’” the report said. “McCabe told us that the conversation was ‘very dramatic’ and he never had a similar confrontation like the PADAG call with a high-level department official in his entire FBI career.”
A FOOTNOTE TO THE REPORT:
In a footnote to the report the inspector general says the Justice official agreed with the description of the call, but objected to seeing that “the Bureau was trying to spin this conversation as some evidence of political interference, which was totally unfair.”
Both the Federal Register and Justice Department documents at the time identified Mr. Axelrod as the principal associate deputy attorney general. His LinkedIn page says he held that position from February 2015 through January 2017.
As the election approached, questions surrounded Mr. McCabe’s objectivity with regards to the Clinton probe. His wife, running for a state Senate seat in Virginia in 2015, had accepted a nearly $700,000 donation from an organization linked to Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe. A long-time confidant, Mr. McAuliffe chaired Mrs. Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.
Mr. McCabe eventually recused himself from the Clinton investigation just three weeks before election day.
“You run the risk of more publicity by going to the field,” Mr. Hosko said. “If I am that agent and I’ve been told to shut down something I’ve been working on, I’m screaming bloody murder.”
Mr. Axelrod quit the Justice Department on Jan. 30, 2017, the same day his boss, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, was fired by President Trump for refusing to defend his travel ban executive order.
He’s now a lawyer in the Washington, D.C., office of British law firm Linklaters.
Who put this guy up to his attempt to shut down an investigation within the FBI? Loretta Lynch, Sally Yates or someone even higher up?
