Lawmakers call on Director Patel to review untapped information ignored by FBI in Clinton email investigation

https://www.grassley.senate.gov/

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Rick Crawford (R-Ark.) recently sent a letter to Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Kash Patel requesting the FBI review unevaluated material related to Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and mishandling of highly classified information during her time as Secretary of State.

This untapped and unreviewed information has lived within thumb drives in the FBI’s custody inside a Northern Virginia offshoot office of the FBI’s Washington Field Office since 2018. 

This letter was sent in response to Chairman Grassley’s efforts to get the appendix to the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General’s (DOJ OIG) June 2018 report reviewing the DOJ and FBI’s handling of the Clinton investigation, also known as the “Clinton annex,” declassified.

“The revelations contained in the declassified OIG appendix are at the heart of why the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) became distrusted by so many under your agency’s prior directors: a failure to impartially conduct its law enforcement and intelligence mission. Concerning the issue at hand, Comey’s FBI shockingly failed to review and exploit evidence in its own possession, even though they admitted in written memos the information was necessary to conduct a ‘thorough and complete investigation.’ The FBI also failed to review and exploit other foreign intelligence information,” Grassley and Crawford wrote.

“Therefore, we now write to stress the importance that this material be immediately dug out from hiding and properly assessed. How evidence which purportedly includes information related to ‘former President Barack Obama’s emails’ and ‘network infrastructure diagrams for U.S. government classified networks,’ remained unreviewed by the preeminent law enforcement agency in the world is mind-numbing. We know you will not similarly ignore evidence in your agency’s possession, no matter where its exploitation or conclusions might lead,” Grassley and Crawford continued.

Notably, the declassified Clinton Annex revealed that:

• Russian-language reports were also obtained by the FBI of discussions between then-Democratic National Committee (DNC) head, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, with suggestions concerning the deletion of evidence on Hillary Clinton’s email servers, mention of FBI’s investigation into the Clinton Foundation, and reports suggesting then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch was in contact with Hillary Clinton’s staff.

• DOJ OIG also relied on the now-debunked Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on the Russia collusion hoax during its review, once again shedding light on the damage caused by the ICA’s widely spread tentacles.

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