A few quotes to consider when thinking about the FBI’s role in the final days before the election.
From Reuters …
Two law enforcement sources familiar with the FBI’s New York Field Office, which initially discovered the emails, said a faction of investigators based in the office is known to be hostile to Hillary Clinton. A spokeswoman for the FBI’s New York office said she had no knowledge about this.
From the Wall Street Journal …
As a result of those complaints, these people said, a senior Justice Department official called the FBI deputy director, Mr. McCabe, on Aug. 12 to say the agents in New York seemed to be disregarding or disobeying their instructions [regarding investigations of the Clinton Foundation], these people said.
From the Washington Post …
Justice Department attorneys and FBI officials in Washington viewed the agents’ presentation as lacking substantive evidence. The attorneys felt it relied too heavily on public reports and the book “Clinton Cash,” and denied the agents authority to move forward, according to people familiar with the discussions. The 2015 book, by conservative author Peter Schweizer, relied heavily on public records and presented a largely circumstantial case that State Department actions were driven by donations to the Clinton Foundation and payments to Bill Clinton.
The move frustrated some agents in New York. They felt they were being stymied by Justice Department higher-ups in Washington and pressed forward in ways they felt were permissible, according to people familiar with the case.
From The Guardian …
Deep antipathy to Hillary Clinton exists within the FBI, multiple bureau sources have told the Guardian, spurring a rapid series of leaks damaging to her campaign just days before the election.
Current and former FBI officials, none of whom were willing or cleared to speak on the record, have described a chaotic internal climate that resulted from outrage over director James Comey’s July decision not to recommend an indictment over Clinton’s maintenance of a private email server on which classified information transited.
“The FBI is Trumpland,” said one current agent.
From Wayne Barrett’s look at Giuliani’s and a top Trumper’s relationship with the FBI’s New York field office …
The man who now leads “lock-her-up” chants at Trump rallies spent decades of his life as a federal prosecutor and then mayor working closely with the FBI, and especially its New York office. One of Giuliani’s security firms employed a former head of the New York FBI office, and other alumni of it. It was agents of that office, probing Anthony Weiner’s alleged sexting of a minor, who pressed Comey to authorize the review of possible Hillary Clinton-related emails on a Weiner device that led to the explosive letter the director wrote Congress.
Hours after Comey’s letter about the renewed probe was leaked on Friday, Giuliani went on a radio show and attributed the director’s surprise action to “the pressure of a group of FBI agents who don’t look at it politically.”
As Barrett pointed out, two days before the Comey letter broke, Giuliani said on Fox News: “I think he’s [Donald Trump] got a surprise or two that you’re going to hear about in the next few days. I mean, I’m talking about some pretty big surprises.”
Then this morning, in answer to whether he knew about the ‘anger’ among the FBI agents and the the new emails that led to the Comey letter, Giuliani said: “I did nothing to get it out, I had no role in it. Did I hear about it? You’re darn right I heard about it, and I can’t even repeat the language that I heard from the former FBI agents.”
