Bizarre, Congress, Constitutional Law, Criminal law

House Committee: FBI Cut Side Deal To Limit Search Of Computers Of Key Clinton Aides And To Allow The Computers To Be Destroyed

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The FBI investigation into the Clinton email scandal seems to grow more questionable by the day.  As I discussed earlier, the five immunity deals handed out by the Justice Department were, in my view, largely unnecessary and undermined the development of any criminal case.  Now, House investigators have learned  that Justice Department officials, in addition to their immunity deals, cut a “side agreement” with Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson for agents to destroy their laptops after searching their hard drives for evidence.  With Congress seeking the information, the side deal clearly would obstruct that investigation and the details of the side agreement make little sense if the FBI were pursuing any and all evidence of criminal conduct.

What is particularly bizarre is that the FBI agreed to limit their search to documents created before Jan. 2015.  That would exclude potential evidence of an ongoing conspiracy or efforts to obstruct the investigations.  The Mills computer, as I have already discussed, should have been handed over given ClintCongressional Sealon’s assurance that her staff would cooperate fully. Instead, Clinton and her staff refused to cooperate with the State Department investigation and then Mills refused to turn over her computer until she was given immunity from criminal charges.  Once again, that computer contained government communications and, more importantly, classified information. The FBI could have seized the computer with a court order without immunity.  Moreover, the contents of the computer contained property of the United States in the form of classified communications.  The FBI did not have to agree to even give back the computer.  Yet, the FBI first immunized Mill and then agreed to limit its search and to destroy the evidence before congressional investigators reviewed the computer.

In my view, the immunity deals and this side agreement raise very serious questions for investigation.  In cutting this deal, the Obama Administration played an active role in the destruction of evidence being sought by Congress.  Since there was no need for the side agreement, the actions of the Administration are now legitimately matters for congressional concern and investigation.

What do you think?

Here is the letter from the House Committee: House Letter

167 thoughts on “House Committee: FBI Cut Side Deal To Limit Search Of Computers Of Key Clinton Aides And To Allow The Computers To Be Destroyed”

  1. Teaching Spastics to Dance, October 4, 2016 at 7:04 pm
    “The term ‘illegal war of aggression’ is nonsensical in just about any circumstance. It’s particularly obscene in this one.”

    Well, gee, if that’s the case, we could just pretend that the US Government didn’t invade and occupy two sovereign nations, Afghanistan and Iraq, which had not attacked the US.

    Is there anything else you’re in denial about that you’d like to pretend away?

    1. Syria has not attacked us, Libya had not attacked us. China is buying our country out from under us. I’ve been pounding the table for war against the heinous Antarctica, but no one will get with the blood lust. I’m even designing my own weapons against that country, but getting defense contractors on board has been a little slow. But soon, the snow will fall and hopefully the electorate will fall in line. Meanwhile… looking for some investors to help fund me while I refine my weapons systems. At my new poolside office in northern VA. Like Khan said, revenge is a dish best served cold.

      1. But Russia is on the menu tomorrow. I wonder if Mr. Peace Prize wants to earn it even more by starting WWIII?

      2. slohrss29 – do you have a kickstarter for the invasion? I might be in. Have some extra cash right now.

        1. Kickstarter–why didn’t I think of that! Got to be something to get this ball rolling. We all should be able to clean up on this racket….errrr…. defense project.

          Sorry to burst your bubble, Jill. I think Fearless Leader has grown bored with the whole Syria-Russia thing. Looks like someone found out those wily Russians have good hardware (not stuff from an overripe, bloated, stamp-it-out, profit machine), and it might be hard, and… they may even shoot back. No, Antarctica is the big threat today. Looking for a couple of K-street guys, or some tax-exempt think tank to get this party started!

  2. I wonder, Professor, what you think they are looking for ?

    They already know she set up a private server. They already know that maybe some emails were improperly classified…maybe not, depending on who you ask.

    What do you think they’re going to find at this point? What is it they are looking for?

    This is so reminiscent of Ken Starr and his Star Chamber, where they kept looking and looking until they found something wrong.

    What are you hoping they find at this point?

    1. “They already know she set up a private server. They already know that maybe some emails were improperly classified…maybe not, depending on who you ask.”

      Nobody – absolutely nobody – is concerned with emails that were misclassified. We are worried about emails that were properly classified and mis handled.

        1. “mis-handled how?”

          Classified material involving tens of thousands of documents over several years removed and stored on a unsecure server. That alone is enough to get most gs and gms a felony charge right there.

          You don’t have to believe me. Just ask some of the people s who made the very serious mistake of taking work product home for who knows what reason – who wound up charged, their lives disrupted, forced form government and some convicted.

          Remember Comey was very careful to say careless and not negligent which would have been a criminal offense.

          Does anyone really believe that setting up a server and sending tens of thousands of work product documents to it for storage over a period of years was ‘careless’. What, exactly, does it take to be premeditated?

          As for security – high school drop outs break into servers like that one.

          1. You are implying that there were tens of thousands of documents on Clinton’s server, that Clinton knew were classified at the time, and agreed that they were classified at the time. This is just not true.

            1. “Clinton knew were classified at the time, and agreed that they were classified at the time. ”

              Since when does agreeing with the classification of a document have anything at all with the legal requirement to protect it.

              In simple layman’s terms – it doesn’t.

            2. Beyond the possibility of doubt or debate Clinton knew she was receiving classified material through that communication channel. She knew her server did not meet government standards for security.

              To place her work product with classified materials on her email servers was far, far beyond careless, or negligent. I was willful and reckless.

              There is ample evidence to prosecute Clinton now – right now.

              1. Bigfatmike
                Gen.Petraeus may have missed an oppotyinity for a great defense:
                “Gee, I didn’t THINK they were classified documents, I didn’t AGREE that they were classified”.

            3. “You are implying that there were tens of thousands of documents on Clinton’s server”

              There were tens to thousands of pages of work product that Clinton prevented from being processed by DOS as required by law.

              There were only a few hundred pages of highly classified documents according to the FBI. There is no doubt those documents were removed and retained and made vulnerable by Clinton for her own purposes that had absolutely nothing to do with her responsibilities as Secretary of State.

  3. @Scott, October 4, 2016 at 9:59 am
    “Professor Turley has been following this case relentlessly. So much so that the blindly loyal partisan hacks regularly whine about it and attempt to divert attention away from it by highjacking the thread to talk about their favorite villains. Today it is Dick Cheney. Yesterday it was John Yoo.”

    I brought up John Yoo’s nazified legal reasoning regarding the legitimacy of torturing certain children, in response to JT’s writing, in a column entirely unrelated to this one, “It is already clear that Duterte believes that the definition of ‘government’ includes extrajudicial killings, authoritarian rule, and contempt for rule of law. However, he now maintains that government cannot by definition include the concept of human rights.” “As an attorney, Duterte is an utter disgrace to our profession.”

    I responded, “Agreed, but what then about John Yoo? Is his thinking regarding what a US president can legally do to enemies of the American state qualitatively different from that of Duterte?”

    That you would try to construe this as any kind of distraction from JT’s writing about the Clinton email scandal makes quite obvious who is in reality “the blindly loyal partisan hack.”

    I’ll leave it to Doglover to justify, if he feels any need to, his comparison of the human casualty toll of the illegal wars of aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq with that of the current email scandal, but it seems to me that only a blindly loyal partisan hack would whine about a possibly embarrassing comparison of the behaviors of two scofflaw administrations representing the two wings of the US War Party.

    1. The term ‘illegal war of aggression’ is nonsensical in just about any circumstance. It’s particularly obscene in this one.

  4. Pingback: PBC News & Comment: Weaponized PR Deployed in Iraq and Syria – Peter B. Collins

  6. I guess Jay S is the latest per diem employee from Media Matters.

    1. Gee, I wish ! I must be losing track of my lucrative paychecks…… I’ve never been accused of that before. I’m flattered! (I think)

      My entire point for my comments here is that many people do not understand how classified information comes to be classified, by whom, and with what authority. And that classification issues are in many cases not black/white, but entirely dependent on the outlooks and prejudices of those involved.

      And FYI, I worked in the defense industry for many many years. I saw hundreds if not thousands of classified documents. But only a handful that I would have classified. Most classified info is that way because of CYA staffers.

  9. This reminds me of the childhood game played with the petals of a daisy. He loves me. He loves me not. He loves me. He loves me not…….

    A crooked insider. A dictator. A crooked insider. A dictator. A crooked insider. A dictator……

  10. Wholeheartedly agree, JT. But with the scaredy cat Republican establishment, a serious Congressional investigation will only go so far, then stall. Meantime, in my opinion, Hillary Clinton is an unindicted felon w many co-conspirators, and the American Revolution has been effectively overturned.

    1. Juliet_CA – those unindicted co-conspirators now include Comey and half the FBI and DoJ.

    1. Hey Indy Bob,
      Lest you take your little people rule to the bank, just remember a certain Calfornia Vietnam fighter pilot Congressman who when to prison. Might want to Google number of national politicians and Fortune 500 CEOs who also served or are serving prison time in the last 8 yrs.

      Not denying income disparity in some justice situations. But not going for a universal assertion.

      1. Only one top banker went to jail for the financial crisis of 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/04/magazine/only-one-top-banker-jail-financial-crisis.html?_r=0

        Here is a complete list of Wall Street CEOs prosecuted for their role in the financial crisis:
        1. No one.

        2. LOL.

        3. Wall Street’s lawyers are amazing.

        4. Etc. Etc.
        https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/09/12/this-is-a-complete-list-of-wall-street-ceos-prosecuted-for-their-role-in-the-financial-crisis/

        1. Here is a complete list of Wall Street CEOs prosecuted for their role in the financial crisis:

          Bad business decisions are not crimes.

          1. “Bad business decisions are not crimes.”

            Nor are they my responsibility. Bad business decisions should result in bankruptcies, not bailouts.

            1. Do you think that it would have been better for GM to have been dissolved and liquidated, than for what actually happened?

              1. Yes. They can file chapter 11 bankruptcies just like anyone else. There should not be too big to fail or to powerful to jail. Yes it would have rocked the economy badly, but the preservation of the rule of law and the concept that we are equal before it is more important in the long run. Private profit and public stakes in debt and loss is fascist.

                  1. The amount does not matter. It is over $700 billion overall for Tarp, etc. GM received $50,744,648,329 with more than $11 billion not repaid as of Oct. 3, 2016. https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/list

                    It was an improper use of taxpayer money regardless of the amount. Public funds should not bail out private businesses.

  12. Scott: Oh yeah, Prof Turley is all over this. He’s having a real impact. You can hear him from, I don’t know, maybe two feet away.

    On Ms. Mills. How exactly does an attorney who is a “subject” of the ongoing investigation because of her time in the State Dept, etc., also sit in on Hillary’s FBI interview- as one of HRC’s lawyers?!? Are there rules of ethics in DC or can certain people make their own rules?

    Is Prof Turley going to be linking to the bar complaint he filed? I’m guessing it’s more professionally profitable in DC to just whine in the occasional article.

    2. Trumpkins are getting desperate and probably should be. Looked at Nate Silver lately.

      1. Not desperation to reply, with a relevant photo, to a comment made @12:52 pm, in which it was claimed that Trump was interested in the chest measurements of his wives, girlfriends and staffers.

        Follow the bouncing ball. IN Clinton’s case, following the bouncing balls.

      1. They take turns. Within their little bubble riding the coat tails of monopoly capitalism, they can be socialists and share the bimbos between themselves.

  14. How come they are all not under arrest? We want to lock up people for not standing for the national anthem when I hear a lot of “true Americans” talk. Yet they will be silent on this.

  15. I’m just waiting for the chief executives last act of pardoning HRC of all actual and possible criminal acts as a means to close this chapter in order for a peaceful transition and to heal all wounds. Hmmmm

    1. Agree, but as an exceptional blogger on another site once said, my cynicism can’t keep up with the facts.

      I think they actually mean to shove corruption in our faces and in doing so are following a rational (if insidious) strategy. They want a public acclimatized to the loosest possible expectations of integrity for when they finally manage to make theft by financial elite100% legal by getting the toxic trade deals through which will enable giant corporations to sue governments for infringing even on projected profits no matter how polluting or how bad for the public’s health or financial well being.

      These deals have a built in mechanisim of dispute settlement (ISDS) that entireloy by-passes any court of law or elected officials from participation. It’s all decided by corporate lawyers who take turns acting as prosecutor, defense and judge.

      1. I agree with this. Further, banks actually have an extrajudicial system now which they use instead of our courts. They have been playing fast and loose with newly made up financial instruments since they last crashed the economy in 2008. Some are currently crashing and many of the rest are going to crash. They will get another bailout at the people’s expense.

        Your point is made by many of the comments here and elsewhere–oh it’s just the way things are, get used to it, etc. In the minds of the oligarchy, that is exactly the right attitude for the people to have. We should never, ever take that stance. It only guarantees things will get worse.

    1. To those of any and all political persuasions: Cynicism is the worldview that explains the most facts, with the least effort.

  19. Hopefully Wikileaks will dump a few telling emails.
    I personally would love to see the one that coordinated Bill’s “impromptu” meeting with AG Lynch on her plane.

    That one piece seems to make this whole scheme look like the DOJ was following a, well, a scheme.

    2. Roscoe, Something that NEVER happens occurred on that tarmac. With people of this “elite” status, someone is always in the room taking notes. ALL people were told to leave the private office on the plane, even the Secret Service. There will be nothing that ever is divulged about that conspiracy. NOTHING! Do even the lemmings and sycophants think the conversation was about “grandchildren?”

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