the more we learn about the justice department<u+2019>s investigation of hillary clinton <u+2019>s private email, the worse it looks. the latest revelation is that, along with granting immunity to two clinton aides, justice agreed to secret side deals that provided highly unusual protections from potential prosecution. the side agreements came to light this week in a letter from house judiciary chairman bob goodlatte to attorney general loretta lynch. mr. goodlatte says he learned about the side deals by examining the immunity agreements, which haven<u+2019>t been released to the public. we already knew that justice offered immunity to at least five central figures in the private email probe, including cheryl mills and heather samuelson, the aides in charge of deciding which of the former secretary of state<u+2019>s emails on her private server would be turned over to the state department. fbi director james comey struggled to explain to congress last week why immunity was necessary to obtain the laptops the two had used for sorting the emails. now we learn that ms. mills and ms. samuelson also obtained guarantees that investigators would not search these laptops after jan. 31, 2015. more amazing, justice agreed to destroy both laptops after examining them. think about that: before the authorities knew what was on the laptops, they agreed to destroy potential evidence in their investigation. the evidence was also under a congressional subpoena and preservation order. the <u+201c>no-look<u+201d> date beyond jan. 31, 2015 means the fbi couldn<u+2019>t see what the two aides said or did after the news of mrs. clinton<u+2019>s private server became public in march 2015. investigators would be unable to determine if ms. mills or ms. samuelson had engaged, as mr. goodlatte put it in his letter, in <u+201c>destruction of evidence or obstruction of justice related to secretary clinton<u+2019>s unauthorized use of a private email server.<u+201d> why else would time limits be necessary given that the two women already had immunity? we<u+2019>re told by prosecutors that this kind of special treatment is all but unheard of. justice would typically empanel a grand jury, which would issue subpoenas to obtain physical evidence like the laptops. no grant of immunity would have been necessary. so why no grand jury? mr. comey told congress last week that the fbi was eager to see the laptop evidence and that it is sometimes easier to have informal agreements to obtain it. but surely it<u+2019>s possible to negotiate with lawyers and conduct a grand jury at the same time. without the threat of a grand jury the clinton entourage had all the leverage, and they were able to get away with what amounted to formal get-out-of-jail-free cards. our guess is that justice also knew that word of a grand jury was likely to leak and further damage mrs. clinton<u+2019>s presidential campaign. better to work sotto voce with the clinton team until mr. comey made his public announcement in july that he was recommending that no charges be brought in the case. all of this adds to the mounting evidence that the fbi and justice gave mrs. clinton and her entourage special political treatment. (see noel francisco and james burnham nearby.) no grand jury that the public knows about. immunity. special side deals. no hard digging into contradictory testimony. an fbi interview only at the last minute. public exoneration by the fbi director when that isn<u+2019>t his job. fbi summaries released on the friday afternoon before labor day. no wonder millions of americans think the system is rigged.
cheryl mills<u+2019>s legal privileges - wsj
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