Judicial Watch: Grand jury targeted Hillary Clinton
A new revelation growing out of a FOIA request made by Judicial Watch shows that the FBI agent in charge of the Hillary Clinton's emails investigation said the former secretary of state was the target of a grand jury investigation.
Judicial Watch today released new State Department documents including a declaration from FBI Special Agent E.W. Priestap, the supervisor of the agency's investigation into Hillary Clinton's email activities, stating that the former secretary of state was the subject of a grand jury investigation related to her BlackBerry email accounts.
The declaration was produced in response to Judicial Watch's lawsuit seeking to force Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to take steps to "recover emails of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton" and other U.S. Department of State employees (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Rex Tillerson (No. 1:15-cv-00785)). The lawsuit was originally filed against then-Secretary of State John Kerry. The Trump State Department filing includes details of the agency's continuing refusal to refer the Clinton email issue to the Justice Department, as the law requires.
In the filing Priestap declares under penalty of perjury that the FBI "obtained Grand Jury subpoenas related to the Blackberry e-mail accounts, which produced no responsive materials, as the requested data was outside the retention time utilized by those providers."
On April 30, 2015, Judicial Watch sued Kerry after the State Department failed to take action on a letter sent to Kerry "notifying him of the unlawful removal of the Clinton emails and requesting that he initiate enforcement action pursuant to the [Federal Records Act]," including working through the Attorney General to recover the emails.
After initially being dismissed by the district court, Judicial Watch's lawsuit was revived on appeal by a decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on December 27, 2016.
While at the State Department, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton conducted official government business using unsecured email server and email accounts. Her top aides and advisors also used non-"state.gov" email accounts to conduct official business. Clinton left office February 1, 2013.
JW President Tom Fitton wonders why this information was kept from the public for so long:
"The FBI convened a grand jury to investigate Hillary Clinton in 2016. Why is this information being released only now?" said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. "And it is disturbing that the State Department, Justice Department and FBI are still trying to protect Hillary Clinton. President Trump needs to clean house at all these agencies."
I don't think there can be any doubt that there is more of this story to tell, including whether A.G. Lynch interfered in the grand jury process and why the FBI still refused to prosecute Clinton. At the time that the FBI refused to recommend that Clinton be charged with a crime, Director Comey suggested that "no prosecutor" would touch the case because of the difficulty in getting a conviction. I think we can safely dismiss that argument. A determined prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict anyone, especially given the evidence the FBI had been able to amass against Clinton. A conviction probably wouldn't have been necessary, given the likelihood that Clinton would have sought a plea deal.
Politico published a puff piece on Clinton, "Hillary's First 100 Days: An Alternate History." How much of those first 100 days would have been devoted to keeping Clinton's ass out of jail?
We'll never know.