Don't miss what's happening in Kingwood
People on Kingwood.com are the first to know.
Go to top of page
Close
 
Close
Back
* CONTEST TODAY: 24 Hours Only - Win a $25 Gift Card to Panera Bread!  Ends in 21 hrs Read more »

WSJ: FBI to review 650,000 emails from Huma/Weiner laptop

WSJ: FBI to review 650,000 emails from Huma/Weiner laptop

123»
« Back
This discussion has been locked.
Message Menu
by: ALetterToElise Active Indicator LED Icon 2 OP 
~ 7 years ago   Oct 30, '16 2:38pm  
Federal agents are preparing to scour roughly 650,000 emails contained on the laptop of former Rep. Anthony Weiner to see how many relate to a prior probe of Hillary Clinton’s email use, as metadata on the device suggests there may be thousands sent to or from the private server that the Democratic nominee used while she was secretary of state, according to people familiar with the matter.
 
The review will take weeks at a minimum to determine whether those messages are work-related emails between Huma Abedin, a close Clinton aide and the estranged wife of Mr. Weiner, and State Department officials; how many are duplicates of emails already reviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and whether they include either classified information or important new evidence in the Clinton email probe, which FBI officials call “Midyear.”
 
The FBI has had to await a court order to begin reviewing the emails, because they were uncovered in an unrelated probe of Mr. Weiner, and that order was delayed for reasons that remain unclear.
 
Meanwhile, FBI Director James Comey’s surprise disclosure Friday, less than two weeks before the election, that investigators were pursuing the potential new evidence lays bare tensions that have built for months inside the bureau and the Justice Department over how to investigate someone who could soon be elected president.
 
The continuing work means that if Mrs. Clinton wins the White House, she will likely do so amid at least one ongoing investigation into her inner circle being handled by law-enforcement officials who are deeply divided over how to manage such cases.
 
The latest development began in early October when New York-based FBI officials notified Andrew McCabe, the bureau’s second-in-command, that while investigating Mr. Weiner for possibly sending sexually charged messages to a minor, they had recovered a laptop with 650,000 emails. Many, they said, were from the accounts of Ms. Abedin, according to people familiar with the matter.
 
Those emails stretched back years, these people said, and were on a laptop that both Mr. Weiner and Ms. Abedin used and that hadn’t previously come up in the Clinton email probe. Ms. Abedin said in late August that the couple were separating.
 
The FBI had searched the computer while looking for child pornography, but the warrant they used didn’t give them authority to search for matters related to Mrs. Clinton’s email arrangement at the State Department.
 
In their initial review of the laptop, the metadata showed many messages, apparently in the thousands, that were either sent to or from the private email server at Mrs. Clinton’s home that had been the focus of so much investigative effort for the FBI. Senior FBI officials decided to let the Weiner investigators proceed with a closer examination of the metadata on the computer, and report back to them.
 
At a meeting early last week of senior Justice Department and FBI officials, a member of the department’s senior national-security staff asked for an update on the Weiner laptop, the people familiar with the matter said. At that point, officials realized that no one had acted to obtain a warrant, these people said.
 
Mr. McCabe then instructed the email investigators to talk to the Weiner investigators and see whether the laptop’s contents could be relevant to the Clinton email probe, these people said. After the investigators spoke, the agents agreed it was potentially relevant.
 
Mr. Comey was given an update, decided to go forward with the case and notified Congress on Friday, with explosive results. Senior Justice Department officials had warned Mr. Comey that telling Congress would violate well-established policies against overt actions that could affect an election, and some within the FBI have been unhappy at Mr. Comey’s repeated public statements on the probe, going back to his first press conference on the subject in July.
 
The back-and-forth reflects how the bureau is probing several matters related, directly or indirectly, to Mrs. Clinton and her inner circle.
 
The split within the Justice Department and FBI over Clinton-related matters has been particularly apparent in the bureau’s investigation of the Clinton Foundation, the Clintons’ family philanthropy. As the email investigation wound down in July, the internal disagreements surrounding the foundation probe heated up, according to people familiar with the matter.
 
New details show that senior officials repeatedly voiced skepticism of the strength of the evidence in that probe, 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.
 
That led to frustrations among some investigators, who viewed 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.
 
Such internal tensions are common, and it isn’t unusual for field agents to favor a more aggressive approach than supervisors and prosecutors think is merited. But the internal debates about the Clinton Foundation show the high stakes when such disagreements occur surrounding someone who is running for president.
 
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Mr. McCabe’s wife, Jill McCabe, received $467,500 in campaign funds in late 2015 from the political action committee of Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a longtime ally of the Clintons and, until he was elected governor in November 2013, a Clinton Foundation board member.
 
Mr. McAuliffe had supported Dr. McCabe in the hopes she and a handful of other Democrats might help win a majority in the state Senate, giving Mr. McAuliffe more sway in the state capitol. Dr. McCabe lost her race last November, and Democrats failed to win their majority.
 
A spokesman for the governor told the Journal he “supported Jill McCabe because he believed she would be a good state senator. This is a customary practice for Virginia governors.”
 
Dr. McCabe told the Journal, “Once I decided to run, my husband had no formal role in my campaign other than to be a supportive husband to me and our children.”
 
In February of this year, Mr. McCabe ascended from the No. 3 position at the FBI to the deputy director post, making him second only to Mr. Comey. When he assumed that role, officials say, he started overseeing the probe into Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server for government work when she was secretary of state.
 
FBI officials have said Mr. McCabe had no role in the Clinton email probe until he became deputy director, and there was no conflict of interest because by then his wife’s campaign was over.
 
But other Clinton-related investigations were under way within the FBI, and they have been the subject of internal debate for months, according to people familiar with the matter.
 
Early this year, four FBI field offices—New York, Los Angeles, Washington and Little Rock, Ark.—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.
 
Clinton Foundation officials have long denied any wrongdoing, saying it is a well-run charity that has done immense good around the world.
 
The FBI field office in New York had done the most work on the Clinton Foundation case and received help from the FBI field office in Little Rock, the people familiar with the matter said.
 
In February, FBI officials made a presentation to the Justice Department, according to these people. By all accounts, the meeting didn’t go well.
 
Some said that is because the FBI didn’t present compelling evidence to justify more aggressive pursuit of the Clinton Foundation, and that the career public integrity prosecutors in the room simply believed it wasn’t a very strong case. Others said that from the start, the Justice Department officials were stern, icy and dismissive of the case.
 
“That was one of the weirdest meetings I’ve ever been to,” one participant told others afterward, according to people familiar with the matter.
 
Justice Department officials told the FBI at the meeting they wouldn’t authorize more aggressive investigative techniques, such as subpoenas, formal witness interviews, or grand-jury activity. But the FBI officials believed they were still well within their authority to pursue the leads and methods already under way, these people said.
 
In July, Mr. Comey announced he was recommending against any prosecution in the Clinton email case. About a week later, the FBI sought to refocus the Clinton Foundation probe, with Mr. McCabe deciding the FBI’s New York office would take the lead with assistance from Little Rock.
 
The Washington field office, FBI officials decided, would focus on a separate matter involving Mr. McAuliffe. Mr. McCabe had decided earlier in the spring that he would continue to recuse himself from that probe, given the governor’s contributions to his wife’s former political campaign.
 
Within the FBI, the decision was viewed with skepticism by some, who felt the probe would be stronger if the foundation and McAuliffe matters were combined. Others, particularly senior officials at the Justice Department, felt that both probes were weak, based largely on publicly available information, and had found little that would merit expanded investigative authority.
 
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, despite the department’s refusal to allow more aggressive investigative methods in the case. Mr. McCabe said agents still had the authority to pursue the issue as long as they didn’t use those methods.
 
The Justice Department official was “very **** off,” according to one person close to Mr. McCabe, and pressed him to explain why the FBI was still chasing a matter the department considered dead. Others said the point of the call was simply the Justice Department trying to make sure that FBI agents were following longstanding policy not to make overt investigative moves that could be seen as trying to influence the outcome of an election. Those rules discourage investigators from making any such moves before a primary or general election, and, at a minimum, checking with public integrity prosecutors before doing so.
 
“Are you telling me that I need to shut down a validly predicated investigation?” Mr. McCabe asked, according to people familiar with the conversation. After a pause, the official replied, “Of course not,” these people said.
 
For Mr. McCabe’s defenders, the exchange showed how he was stuck between an FBI office eager to pour more resources into a case and Justice Department leaders who didn’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.
 
Mr. McCabe’s defenders in the agency said that following the call, he repeated the instruction that he had given earlier in the Clinton Foundation investigation: Agents 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: “Stand down.” When agents questioned why they weren’t allowed to take more aggressive steps, they said they were told the order had come from the deputy director—Mr. McCabe.
 
Others familiar with the matter deny Mr. McCabe or any other senior FBI official gave such a stand-down instruction.
 
For agents who already felt uneasy about FBI leadership’s handling of the Clinton Foundation case, the moment only deepened their concerns, these people said. For those who felt the probe hadn’t yet found significant evidence of criminal conduct, the leadership’s approach was the right response to the facts on the ground.
 
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 classified information.
 
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 could not “go prosecutor-shopping.”
 
Not long after that discussion, FBI agents informed the bureau’s leaders about the Weiner laptop, prompting Mr. Comey’s disclosure to Congress and setting of the furor that promises to consume the final days of a tumultuous campaign.
4951
* Reactions disabled on political threads.
What are your thoughts? Log in or sign up to comment
Replies:
Message Menu
friday1 Active Indicator LED Icon 9
~ 7 years ago   Oct 30, '16 2:54pm  
Is Huma like the dumbest woman in the world. I don't care who get mad.1 You butt kiss the most crooked person in politics. Usually surrogates to politicians are unknown.2 You store all correspondence on a laptop and save it.. Knowing you you have cucial information to a FBI investigation.3 You marry a guy named Weiner who sexts photos and let him off the hook instead of divorcing him. Eventually she does because he is messing with a 15 yo. 4951
* Reactions disabled on political threads.
Message Menu
Metro07 Active Indicator LED Icon 3
~ 7 years ago   Oct 30, '16 3:22pm  
I don't think Huma has the security clearance to view much less possess these emails.  Weiner dam sure can't so that is a huge problem for her. 4951
* Reactions disabled on political threads.
Message Menu
Stealth83 Active Indicator LED Icon 16
~ 7 years ago   Oct 30, '16 5:42pm  
Removed By Request 4951
* Reactions disabled on political threads.
Message Menu
TheTruthHurts Active Indicator LED Icon 12
~ 7 years ago   Oct 30, '16 5:54pm  
Wow, what a bunch of less-than-desirable individuals. LOLYay for America, we're screwed. Emoticon 4951
* Reactions disabled on political threads.
Message Menu
SwimSwim Active Indicator LED Icon 2
~ 7 years ago   Oct 30, '16 5:55pm  
If Mrs. Weiner is smart she will roll on Hilary.  She has a young child to think about.  Her husband may very well go to prison.   4951
* Reactions disabled on political threads.
Message Menu
Fallon Active Indicator LED Icon 18
~ 7 years ago   Oct 30, '16 6:00pm  
Removed By Request 4951
* Reactions disabled on political threads.
Message Menu
JTKK Active Indicator LED Icon 7
~ 7 years ago   Oct 30, '16 6:02pm  
I have my popcorn ready and will be watching all of this the next few days. 4951
* Reactions disabled on political threads.
Message Menu
friday1 Active Indicator LED Icon 9
~ 7 years ago   Oct 30, '16 6:10pm  
I bet she still garners over 40% of the general vote. 4951
* Reactions disabled on political threads.
Message Menu
TheTruthHurts Active Indicator LED Icon 12
~ 7 years ago   Oct 30, '16 6:15pm  
If Mrs. Weiner is smart she will roll on Hilary.  She has a young child to think about.  Her husband may very well go to prison.  
 
@SwimSwim:
 
As well he should. I can see it now: Weiner goes to prison for being a prick.
 
Emoticon 4951
* Reactions disabled on political threads.
Message Menu
donnatella Active Indicator LED Icon 13 Forum Moderator
~ 7 years ago   Oct 30, '16 8:54pm  
Trump's been hollering about those "missing" emails. Looks like this was the ultimate motherload plus several hundred thousand more. Just enough to burst her balloon a bit and cast serious doubt before the election.
 
He's still a pig and a pisspoor choice but hopefully this will help him a bit.
 
Wonder what they will find and leak BEFORE Election Day? 4951
* Reactions disabled on political threads.
Message Menu
Metro07 Active Indicator LED Icon 3
~ 7 years ago   Oct 30, '16 9:38pm  
Hillary should go to prison for not securing top secret files.  It isn't like she had no idea what they were.  After 8 years of her dh being Pres, she should have been uber qualified to be SOS.She wasn't.  She is inept in the extreme.  You have to wonder who on Clinton's team took that info that was freely floating around and sold it to the highest bidder.
 
@Fallon: Hillary told the FBI she did not know what was classified and what was not so she would not have known which ones to secure with a separate server.  Then even if she did, she would have to hire someone to clean that server at least once a week with a cloth so she would need to run a background check on them to make sure they don't have any Clinton in them.
4951
* Reactions disabled on political threads.
Message Menu
donnatella Active Indicator LED Icon 13 Forum Moderator
~ 7 years ago   Oct 30, '16 10:08pm  
How in the world will she explain all those emails being on Weiner's computer/server?
 
A sick pediphile has got to be a absolute worst choice as a place to stash "hidden" and "missing" emails. Right there calls her decision making and judgment into question, along with her morals and ethics. 4951
* Reactions disabled on political threads.
Message Menu
ET Active Indicator LED Icon 17
~ 7 years ago   Oct 31, '16 8:37am  
Loading Image... 4951
* Reactions disabled on political threads.
Message Menu
JerryJustice Active Indicator LED Icon 3
~ 7 years ago   Oct 31, '16 9:21am  

I'll just leave this here, they were filming a documentary about Anthony Weiner after the first scandal broke and it shows the exact moment his wife sees about the second scandal its pretty cringy skip to 1:15https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0T1Rb_Q8cg&feature=youtu.be&t=1m15sthats the link if it doesn't work 4951
* Reactions disabled on political threads.
Message Menu
CantStandTex Active Indicator LED Icon 7
~ 7 years ago   Oct 31, '16 9:25am  
Did anyone actually read that opening post start to finish? Way too many words for a Monday morning...way to many words for an entire Monday. 4951
* Reactions disabled on political threads.
123»
This discussion has been locked.
« Back to Main Page
Views: 147
# Replies: 32

Cruz Tree Service




Primrose School of Atascocita Logo Always Best Care Humble Kingwood Logo Anytime Pest Elimination  Logo PWR House Generators Logo iSchool High Atascocita  Logo Back Pew Brewing Logo A+ Atascocita Lawn Services Logo Holy Comforter Lutheran Church Easter Sunday Logo Best Investments Siding & Windows Logo Kingwood Mortgage Guy Logo Kingwood Spaces Logo The Grounds Guys Logo Kingwood Pet Resort Logo Aesthetic Dentistry Associates Logo Northpark Animal Hospital Logo Dale P. Guidry - State Farm Insurance Logo Hotworx Kingwood Logo Anthony Electric Co. Logo
Sponsor an ad Sponsor an Ad »