ICYMI: Obama DOJ in “Very Dramatic” Fashion Pressured FBI to End Investigations into Hillary Clinton

The politicization of the FBI is not good for the country and a sad day in the FBI’s proud history. Overlooked amidst the turmoil and allegations surrounding the firing of James Comey and Andrew McCabe, an important new detail has come to light on an old theme: the Obama Justice Department put unprecedented pressure on the FBI to not investigate or end its investigations of Democrat Party Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton (emphasis added):

The [Justice] department’s inspector general exposed just how deep the feuding ran in a new report last week investigating the actions of former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. The report recounted an August 2016 phone call from a high-level Justice Department official who complained the FBI had taken “overt” actions to investigate the Clinton Foundation, potentially embarrassing then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Mr. McCabe said he got the sense the Obama Justice Department was telling him “to shut down” the probe. Later he called the exchange [ ] “very dramatic” and said he’d never had a confrontation like that with the Justice Department.

The reason for the pressure was that the FBI, among other things, had found “suspicious activity” between the Clinton Foundation and a foreign donor:

The inspector general (IG) confirmed in its long-awaited report released Friday that in 2016 the FBI had ongoing field investigations of the Clinton Foundation in New York, Los Angeles, Little Rock, Arkansas and Washington, D.C. The multi-city investigation was launched when agents found “suspicious activity” between a foreign donor and Clinton Foundation activity in the Los Angeles area, as TheDCNF reported in August 2016.

Although both the Obama-appointed Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz and the non-partisan FBI Office of Professional Responsibility recommended McCabe be fired, in the media liberals’ defend McCabe from politicization accusations for leaking in part because the information “hurt” Hillary Clinton.  According to the IG, McCabe’s leaking was for self-preservation as he seemed worried about the strength of the narrative that the FBI's handling of the investigations into Hillary Clinton was unduly biased in her favor:   

McCabe was worried about an Oct. 23, 2016, Wall Street Journal article, which appeared to have damaged his reputation for impartiality because the journalist, Devlin Barrett, reported McCabe’s wife received a campaign donation of nearly a half million dollars from Clinton friend and political ally Terry McAuliffe for her run for a Virginia state seat.

In an alleged attempt to show he wasn’t impartial to the Clintons, McCabe leaked information to Barrett a week later that claimed he personally fought the Justice Department’s attempt to shut down the FBI’s investigation, according to the Inspector General’s report. Barrett’s article appeared Oct. 30 and was titled, “FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe.”  . . . 

McCabe authorized bureau officials to leak the information about the Aug. 12 call, the IG claims. “Specifically, McCabe stated that he authorized Special Counsel and AD/OPA to provide to Barrett the account of his August 12 call with PADAG because McCabe thought it was the ‘best example’ to counter the “incredibly damaging” narrative in Barrett’s intended story,” the report reads.

Comey and McCabe were concerned about the evidence or appearance of evidence that Obama’s Department of Justice and Clinton allies had successfully influenced FBI investigations into Hillary Clinton.  They were concerned that might taint her victory because at the time they thought her election to be certain.  Their actions just showed why they should have been fired.  The larger question is who in the Obama Department of Justice (or even the White House) was trying to pressure the FBI and why are they not facing consequences? 

Another op-ed on the topic is here.