What’s the FBI Hiding? A pile of dirt
Started by Robert M
September 15, 2016
Earlier
this week, Republican leaders in both houses of Congress took the FBI
to task for its failure to be transparent. In the House, it was
apparently necessary to serve a subpoena on an FBI agent to obtain what
members of Congress want to see; and in the Senate, the chairman of the
Judiciary Committee accused the FBI itself of lawbreaking.
Here is the back story.
Ever since FBI Director James Comey announced on July 5
he was recommending that the Department of Justice not seek charges
against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as a result of her
failure to safeguard state secrets during her time in office, many in
Congress have had a nagging feeling that this was a political, not a
legal, decision. The publicly known evidence of Clinton’s recklessness
and willful failure to safeguard secrets was overwhelming. The evidence
of her lying under oath about whether she returned all her work-related
emails that she had taken from the State Department was profound and
incontrovertible.
And
then we learned that people who worked for Clinton were instructed to
destroy several of her mobile devices and to remove permanently the
stored emails on one of her servers. All this was done after these items
had been subpoenaed by two committees of the House of Representatives.
Yet
the FBI — which knew of the post-subpoena destruction of evidence and
which acknowledged that Clinton failed to return thousands of her
work-related emails as she had been ordered by a federal judge to do,
notwithstanding at least three of her assertions to the contrary while
under oath — chose to overlook the evidence of not only espionage but
also obstruction of justice, tampering with evidence, perjury and
misleading Congress.
As
if to defend itself in the face of this most un-FBI-like behavior, the
FBI then released to the public selected portions of its work product,
which purported to back up its decision to recommend against the
prosecution of Clinton. Normally, the FBI gathers evidence and works
with federal prosecutors and federal grand juries to build cases against
targets in criminal probes, and its recommendations to prosecutors are
confidential.
But
in Clinton’s case, the hierarchy of the Department of Justice removed
itself from the chain of command because of the orchestrated impropriety
of Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton, who met in private
on the attorney general’s plane at a time when both Bill and Hillary
Clinton were subjects of FBI criminal investigations. That left the FBI
to have the final say about prosecution — or so the FBI and the DOJ
would have us all believe.
It
is hard to believe that the FBI was free to do its work, and it is
probably true that the FBI was restrained by the White House early on.
There were numerous aberrations in the investigation. There was no grand
jury; no subpoenas were issued; no search warrants were served. Two
people claimed to have received immunity, yet the statutory prerequisite
for immunity — giving testimony before a grand or trial jury — was
never present.
Because
many members of Congress do not believe that the FBI acted free of
political interference, they demanded to see the full FBI files in the
case, not just the selected portions of the files that the FBI had
released. In the case of the House, the FBI declined to surrender its
files, and the agent it sent to testify about them declined to reveal
their contents. This led to a dramatic service of a subpoena by the
chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on that
FBI agent while he was testifying — all captured on live nationally
broadcast television.
Now
the FBI, which usually serves subpoenas and executes search warrants,
is left with the alternative of complying with this unwanted subpoena by
producing its entire file or arguing to a federal judge why it should
not be compelled to do so.
On
the Senate side, matters are even more out of hand. There, in response
to a request from the Senate Judiciary Committee, the FBI sent both
classified and unclassified materials to the Senate safe room. The
Senate safe room is a secure location that is available only to senators
and their senior staff, all of whom must surrender their mobile devices
and writing materials and swear in writing not to reveal whatever they
see while in the room before they are permitted to enter.
According
to Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the
FBI violated federal law by commingling classified and unclassified
materials in the safe room, thereby making it unlawful for senators to
discuss publicly the unclassified material.
Imposing
such a burden of silence on U.S. senators about unclassified materials
is unlawful and unconstitutional. What does the FBI have to hide? Whence
comes the authority of the FBI to bar senators from commenting on
unclassified materials?
Who
cares about this? Everyone who believes that the government works for
us should care because we have a right to know what the government —
here the FBI — has done in our names. Sen.
Grassley has opined that if he could reveal what he has seen in the FBI
unclassified records, it would be of profound interest to American
voters.
What
is going on here? The FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton has not
served the rule of law. The rule of law — a pillar of American
constitutional freedom since the end of the Civil War — mandates that
the laws are to be enforced equally. No one is beneath their protection,
and no one is above their requirements. To enforce the rule of law, we
have hired the FBI.
What do we do when the FBI rejects its basic responsibilities?
Reprinted with the author’s permission.
Laura J Alcorn
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