at 1:27 pm 2 comments 




yesterday, the wall street journal published a fascinating and troubling article detailing how aggressively the department of injustice moved to stymie efforts of fbi agents who wanted to investigate pay-to-play criminality with regard to the clinton foundation. 




of course, none of this should come as a surprise. the justice department under president obama never met a powerful person it cared to prosecute. indeed, under eric holder<u+2019>s crony reign (same now with loretta lynch), it<u+2019>s been apparent for a very long time that senior leadership at the doj see the institution<u+2019>s primary role to be the coddling and protection of oligarch criminals, especially those in the financial sector (see: must watch video <u+2013> <u+201c>the veneer of justice in a kingdom of crime<u+201d> ). 




the death of the rule of law in america, otherwise known as the two-tier justice system, has been a key topic of mine since the very beginning. in fact, i think it is the number one cancer plaguing our society at this time. as i warned in the 2014 post, new report <u+2013> the united states<u+2019> sharp drop in economic freedom since 2000 driven by <u+201c>decline in rule of law<u+201d> : 




in my opinion, the u.s. is living on borrowed time. the entrepreneurial spirit is still very much alive, and a lot of innovative things are happening in the tech area, but other than that, the u.s. economy looks very much like a third word oligarchy. from my perspective, we need to reinstate the rule of law at once. the bad actors amongst the rich and powerful will continue to feast relentlessly on the productive parts of the economy so long as they they are never held accountable for their crimes. simply put: the rule of law must be restored immediately. 




when it comes to the restoration of the rule of law, there is simply no time to waste. 




the rule of law has not been restored, a realization that is consistently reenforced by the lengths to which the department of justice goes to protect the powerful. yesterday<u+2019>s wsj article gives us an additional glimpse into how that happens behind the scenes. 




  article, fbi in internal feud over hillary clinton probe : 




the surprise disclosure that agents from the federal bureau of investigation are taking a new look at hillary clinton<u+2019>s email use lays bare, just days before the election, tensions inside the bureau and the justice department over how to investigate the democratic presidential nominee. 




the new investigative effort, disclosed by fbi director james comey on friday, shows a bureau at times in sharp internal disagreement over matters related to the clintons, and how to handle those matters fairly and carefully in the middle of a national election campaign. even as the probe of mrs. clinton<u+2019>s email use wound down in july, internal disagreements within the bureau and the justice department surrounding the clintons<u+2019> family philanthropy heated up, according to people familiar with the matter. 




new details show that senior law-enforcement officials repeatedly voiced skepticism of the strength of the evidence in a bureau investigation of the clinton foundation, sought to condense what was at times a sprawling cross-country effort, and, according to some people familiar with the matter, told agents to limit their pursuit of the case. the probe of the foundation began more than a year ago to determine whether financial crimes or influence peddling occurred related to the charity. 




some investigators grew frustrated, viewing fbi leadership as uninterested in probing the charity, these people said. others involved disagreed sharply, defending fbi bosses and saying mr. mccabe in particular was caught between an increasingly acrimonious fight for control between the justice department and fbi agents pursuing the clinton foundation case. 




early this year, four fbi field offices<u+2014>new york, los angeles, washington and little rock, ark.<u+2014>were collecting information about the clinton foundation to see if there was evidence of financial crimes or influence-peddling, according to people familiar with the matter. 




los angeles agents had picked up information about the clinton foundation from an unrelated public-corruption case and had issued some subpoenas for bank records related to the foundation, these people said. 




the washington field office was probing financial relationships involving mr. mcauliffe before he became a clinton foundation board member, these people said. mr. mcauliffe has denied any wrongdoing, and his lawyer has said the probe is focused on whether he failed to register as an agent of a foreign entity. 




in february, fbi officials made a presentation to the justice department, according to these people. by all accounts, the meeting didn<u+2019>t go well. 




some said that is because the fbi didn<u+2019>t present compelling evidence to justify more aggressive pursuit of the clinton foundation, and that the career anticorruption prosecutors in the room simply believed it wasn<u+2019>t a very strong case. others said that from the start, the justice department officials were stern, icy and dismissive of the case. 




<u+201c>that was one of the weirdest meetings i<u+2019>ve ever been to,<u+201d> one participant told others afterward, according to people familiar with the matter. 




anticorruption prosecutors at the justice department told the fbi at the meeting they wouldn<u+2019>t authorize more aggressive investigative techniques, such as subpoenas, formal witness interviews, or grand-jury activity. but the fbi officials believed they were well within their authority to pursue the leads and methods already under way, these people said. 




according to a person familiar with the probes, on aug. 12, a senior justice department official called mr. mccabe to voice his displeasure at finding that new york fbi agents were still openly pursuing the clinton foundation probe during the election season. mr. mccabe said agents still had the authority to pursue the issue as long as they didn<u+2019>t use overt methods requiring justice department approvals. 




the justice department official was <u+201c>very pissed off,<u+201d> according to one person close to mr. mccabe, and pressed him to explain why the fbi was still chasing a matter the department considered dormant. others said the justice department was simply trying to make sure fbi agents were following longstanding policy not to make overt investigative moves that could be seen as trying to influence an election. those rules discourage investigators from making any such moves before a primary or general election, and, at a minimum, checking with anticorruption prosecutors before doing so. 




<u+201c>are you telling me that i need to shut down a validly predicated investigation?<u+201d> mr. mccabe asked, according to people familiar with the conversation. after a pause, the official replied, <u+201c>of course not,<u+201d> these people said. 




for mr. mccabe<u+2019>s defenders, the exchange showed how he was stuck between an fbi office eager to pour more resources into a case and justice department prosecutors who didn<u+2019>t think much of the case, one person said. those people said that following the call, mr. mccabe reiterated past instructions to fbi agents that they were to keep pursuing the work within the authority they had. 




others further down the fbi chain of command, however, said agents were given a much starker instruction on the case: <u+201c>stand down.<u+201d> when agents questioned why they weren<u+2019>t allowed to take more aggressive steps, they said they were told the order had come from the deputy director<u+2014>mr. mccabe. 




others familiar with the matter deny mr. mccabe or any other senior fbi official gave such a stand-down instruction. 




in september, agents on the foundation case asked to see the emails contained on nongovernment laptops that had been searched as part of the clinton email case, but that request was rejected by prosecutors at the eastern district of new york, in brooklyn. those emails were given to the fbi based on grants of partial immunity and limited-use agreements, meaning agents could only use them for the purpose of investigating possible mishandling of   




some fbi agents were dissatisfied with that answer, and asked for permission to make a similar request to federal prosecutors in manhattan, according to people familiar with the matter. mr. mccabe, these people said, told them no and added that they couldn<u+2019>t <u+201c>go prosecutor-shopping.<u+201d> 




the above revelations, in conjunction with the email server probe being reopened by the fbi, is why i now think donald trump has a very good chance of winning the presidency. as i noted in friday<u+2019>s post, another black swan hits the u.s. presidential election : 




the problems with hillary clinton will never go away. they will always resurface or new problems will emerge, and it has nothing to do with a <u+201c>vast rightwing conspiracy<u+201d> (or putin). it has to do with her. it has to do with the fact that her and her husband are career crooks, warmongers, and shameless looters of the american public. this re-opening of the fbi investigation just hammers all of that home for everyone. we know what 4 years of hillary will look like. it<u+2019>ll be obama cronyism on steroids, plus endless investigations with a side of world war 3. i don<u+2019>t think people want that, and so more americans than the pundits realize will take a gamble on trump. 




it<u+2019>s not just me saying it. even longtime clinton supporter doug schoen is revisiting whether he can continue to support clinton. as he wrote   there will be no goodwill or honeymoon period for clinton. her first 100-days agenda will take a backseat to partisan divisions and polarization with little chance of constructive legislative action occurring. we have seen that a hyper-partisan, gridlocked washington is bad for the country. there is no reason to believe that clinton<u+2019>s tenure will be anything but more of the same in this way and, most likely, a lot worse. further, russian president vladimir putin said (tongue-in-cheek) that we are not a banana republic.<u+200e> i greatly fear we could become one if secretary clinton is elected president. our national security will continue to be jeopardized by ongoing investigations by the fbi, and potentially the justice department and congress, putting us at immediate risk of more assertive actions in europe, middle east and asia by the russians and chinese. moreover, we simply cannot face a situation where the president elect may need or want a pardon from the president to govern. or worse yet, need to pardon herself after she takes office. as of now, i have no confidence that either of those questions will be answered by election day or that we will have full clarity on an investigation into what could be as many as 650,000 emails that found their way to weiner and abedin<u+2019>s computer. however, in good conscience, and as a democrat, i am actively doubting whether i can vote for the secretary of state. i also want to make clear that i cannot vote for donald trump as his world view and mine are very different. for more on the clinton foundation, see:
the story of how the doj tried to thwart an fbi investigation into the clinton foundation
michael krieger