SEE ALSO: 10 Unnerving Secrets Of The FBI It’s vitally important that an organization as powerful as the FBI be kept on a short leash of public accountability at all times. Given the chance to overrun its mandate, the agency could quickly transform from a defender of the weak into a malignant force of oppression. But what if the FBI has already run amok and is now a puppet of special interests driven by anti-American agendas? If these recent telling signs of corruption in the FBI are truly indicative of widespread misconduct, then America may have a constitutional crisis on its hands.
10 The Benghazi Investigation
On September 11, 2012, the United States diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, was attacked by Islamic extremists. Originally billed as a spontaneous protest triggered by a video critical of Muslims, it was later revealed that the Benghazi attack was actually planned well in advance.[1] The date chosen for this brutal attack, which took the lives of four Americans, hardly seems like a coincidence. It’s also decidedly odd that the State Department chose to task a little-known British security company named Blue Mountain with handling the protection of the Benghazi mission. At the time that they were awarded their diplomatic security contract by the State Department, Blue Mountain had no employees in the Benghazi region. They hired 20 local men to do the job, requiring minimal background checks and providing hardly any training. Some sources have suggested that members of the Blue Mountain security team abandoned their posts during the attack and may have even participated in the killings of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. As the head of the State Department at the time, Hillary Rodham Clinton was tasked with the protection of American diplomats stationed abroad. Why the Clinton State Department chose Blue Mountain over dozens of far more qualified and reputable security companies remains a mystery. But what’s certain is that Clinton’s negligence in handling security in Benghazi was noted by several prominent Republican lawmakers. Also, an FBI investigation into the Benghazi attacks is ongoing. However, despite evidence that Secretary Clinton’s choices led to the loss of American lives, the FBI has not charged her with any crimes. Perhaps this is a sign of corruption at the highest levels of the FBI, or perhaps both the public and the FBI simply became distracted by the scandal which reared its ugly head from the wake of the Benghazi proceedings: Clinton’s illegal use of a private server to store classified material.
9 Emailgate
As America watched the Benghazi investigation unfold, it became clear that Secretary Clinton had mishandled classified information. While Clinton attested that using a personal mobile device and a home server to store information vital to national security was merely a “convenience,” improper storage of classified material is against the law and has led to the indictment of numerous public officials. In August 2015, the FBI embarked on a detailed investigation into the Clinton email scandal. Yet despite the evidence against Hillary Clinton, FBI head James Comey decided that Secretary Clinton had merely been “extremely careless” rather than “grossly negligent” in her handling of classified information, clearing her of criminal wrongdoing. Comey came to this conclusion after questioning Clinton behind closed doors on the Fourth of July weekend in 2016. The FBI did not record the session and did not require that Clinton testify under oath. However, citing new evidence found on the laptop of Anthony Weiner, Comey briefly reopened the email investigation just weeks before the November 8, 2016, presidential election. In the end, Comey stuck to his original conclusion but not before casting serious aspersions on Clinton’s candidacy. Since then, troubling questions have been raised about the roles played by two top FBI officials, Peter Strzok and Andrew McCabe, in Clinton’s exoneration. The Justice Department reopened the Clinton email investigation in January 2018 after it was revealed that Strzok had been responsible for changing the language in Comey’s July 5, 2016, statement to save Secretary Clinton from criminal charges.[2] McCabe is suspected of delaying the investigation into the files found on Weiner’s laptop for as long as possible. Both agents have been shown on numerous occasions to have engaged in partisan politics unbefitting of their stations.
8 The Tarmac Meeting
The United States attorney general is the head of the Justice Department and is directly in charge of the FBI. On June 27, 2016, Attorney General Loretta Lynch secretly met with Bill Clinton on her government plane as it sat on the tarmac of Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix, Arizona. While Lynch described this meeting as an impromptu opportunity for socialization between old friends, FBI documents obtained by Judicial Watch expose that Clinton purposefully delayed the takeoff of his aircraft to “maneuver” a meeting with the attorney general.[3] The Judicial Watch documents further show that the FBI was more concerned about information regarding the meeting leaking to the public than they were about the meeting itself. If the meeting was innocuous, why would the FBI be concerned about the public finding out about it? Soon after the meeting, Loretta Lynch asked FBI Director James Comey to stop calling the Clinton email probe an “investigation” and to call it a “matter” instead. Comey stated under oath that this request to change the language used in an active investigation for apparently partisan political reasons gave him a “queasy feeling.” Nonetheless, Hillary Clinton was exonerated of all alleged crimes associated with her use of a private email server a week after the tarmac meeting.
7 Uranium One
In 2010, the FBI was one of nine agencies that approved the sale of US uranium mining facilities owned by the Canadian company Uranium One to Rosatom, a state-sponsored Russian energy company. This deal provided the Russian government with control of roughly 20 percent of all US uranium reserves and was incidentally also approved by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Interestingly, by the time of the 2010 Uranium One deal, the FBI had already acquired a mass of evidence proving that Rosatom was involved in bribery, kickback schemes, money laundering, and extortion to expand Putin’s influence over American uranium. The sale of American uranium to Russia went through anyway without FBI interference. In 2017, the US House Intelligence Committee began investigating the Uranium One deal for signs of criminal wrongdoing. In February 2018, FBI informant William Douglas Campbell testified that Rosatom had hired lobbying firm APCO for $3 million a year to gain Hillary Clinton’s approval of the deal by making massive contributions to the Clinton Global Initiative. Campbell asserts that hiring APCO is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Rosatom’s corruption.[4] The United States has to import uranium to keep up with demand. Choosing to sell 20 percent of US uranium reserves would therefore be a potential danger to national security and is especially troubling because the sale was made to a company like Rosatom.
6 The Russia Probe
Ever since the culmination of the 2016 presidential election, leftist publications and pundits have insisted that the real reason Hillary Clinton lost wasn’t that she is corrupt and out of touch but that Donald Trump colluded with the Russian government to steal the election. Although collusion isn’t a crime when it comes to federal elections and Russia and other countries have been interfering in US elections for decades, the Justice Department still appointed former FBI director Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate possible Russian interference in the 2016 election. Sniffing an opportunity to undermine the authority of the duly elected president of the United States, media outlets breathlessly waited for months for Mueller’s team to drop the hammer. Yet after several indictments of minor campaign officials regarding unrelated technicalities and a smattering of embarrassingly blatant instances of fake news, Democrats seemed to realize that the collusion narrative was going nowhere and switched to accusing Trump and his team of obstruction of justice instead. The Justice Department and the FBI have expended enormous resources pursuing a case that probably doesn’t exist. It’s practically undeniable that Russia meddled in the 2016 US election, but there’s still no evidence that Trump officials wittingly colluded with Russian agents to sway the election outcome. What’s certain, though, is that at least one top FBI agent had to be removed from Mueller’s team due to obvious political bias. Special agent Peter Strzok called Trump an “idiot” in a text message, and that’s only the beginning of Strzok’s partisan behavior.[5]
5 The Strzok Texts
FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok exchanged text messages with colleague Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer with whom he was allegedly having an extramarital affair, that were open about their shared hatred of Donald Trump. This is especially troubling because Strzok was assigned to a team tasked with objectively determining whether Trump had colluded with Russia to steal the election. Yet Strzok made no pretense of hiding his dislike of the current president, calling Trump a “d—che” and showing obvious favor for candidate Clinton throughout the course of the 2016 election. Former President Barack Obama also came under scrutiny as a result of these text messages. In one September 2016 communique from Page to Strzok, Page mentions that “potus [then-president Obama] wants to know everything we are doing.” Obama had previously stated that he had not conferred with the FBI regarding the Clinton email investigation, to which Strzok and Page were assigned at the time.[6] Another Strzok text references a mysterious “secret society.” Some people believe that this term referred to a secret group within the FBI that is biased against Trump. Others say that the term is simply an attempt at humor and shouldn’t be taken seriously. But perhaps the most damning text that Strzok sent to Page seems to suggest plans at the highest levels of the FBI to undermine Trump in the event of his ascension to the presidency. We’ll discuss that next.
4 The Insurance Policy
In August 2016, Peter Strzok sent Lisa Page a text message that seems to reference a meeting held among Strzok, Page, and Andrew McCabe, who was deputy director of the FBI at the time. The message reads as follows: I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office—that there’s no way he gets elected—but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.[7] In this message, Strzok expresses his hope that Page is right and that Trump will not become president. But Strzok also appears to reference his intent to prepare for the unlikely possibility of Trump’s election by way of an unspecified “insurance policy.” Was Strzok organizing or otherwise participating in a resistance within the FBI to undermine the authority vested in Trump by the American people? Some individuals interpret it that way. Others feel that Strzok was simply voicing his political views without necessarily trying to influence investigations concerning Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. Nevertheless, in late January 2018, FBI Deputy Director McCabe stepped down, retiring earlier than expected, after meeting with FBI Director Christopher Wray to discuss an inspector general report about the Clinton email investigation. Some news accounts said that McCabe’s role in the email investigation was under scrutiny.
3 Andrew McCabe’s Wife
In late 2015, Jill McCabe, the wife of recently retired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, ran a failed campaign for a Virginia state senate seat. Her campaign received contributions totaling around $675,000 from the Virginia Democratic Party and a super PAC controlled by Democratic Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, a longtime Clinton ally. Jill McCabe lost the race months before her husband became involved in the Clinton email investigation. However, the fact remains that Andrew McCabe’s wife had been enabled to run for office by a close associate of Hillary Clinton. As we mentioned earlier, the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has taken a recent interest in Andrew McCabe’s handling of the emails recovered from Anthony Weiner’s laptop in early October 2016. Though FBI ethics officials failed to warn McCabe about potential conflicts of interest regarding his involvement in the investigation of Clinton’s emails, the OIG is investigating, among other things, whether certain FBI personnel tried to delay publicizing the emails until after the November 2016 election.[8]
2 Bruce Ohr’s Wife
Bruce Ohr was the Department of Justice (DOJ) official who originally delivered the so-called “Russia dossier” to the FBI. Ohr was demoted in December 2017 for failing to inform the DOJ of his meetings with employees of Fusion GPS, the opposition research company that authored the dossier. Bruce Ohr’s wife, Nellie Ohr, worked for Fusion GPS at the time the dossier was being formulated. Bruce Ohr failed to disclose this conflict of interest to the DOJ. According to Paul Kamenar, a Washington, DC, public policy lawyer, it is a federal crime to “knowingly and willfully” fail to file the required information on government ethics forms.[9] The FBI went on to use the “Russia dossier” to help secure a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to surveil at least one Trump campaign official in the run-up to the 2016 election.
1 FISA-Gate
In March 2017, President Trump made the startling claim that the Obama administration had surveilled Trump Tower during the 2016 election. Trump was ridiculed by the media for making this unverified allegation, but it now appears that at least one member of Trump’s campaign team was surveilled by members of the outgoing administration. On February 2, 2018, the House Intelligence Committee declassified a controversial memo authored by Chairman Devin Nunes. The memo reveals that members of the Obama Justice Department had presented a “salacious and unverified” dossier authored by discredited FBI informant Christopher Steele as a key piece of evidence when requesting a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to surveil Trump campaign adviser Carter Page (no known relation to FBI lawyer Lisa Page mentioned earlier) during the 2016 election. The Steele dossier was used as evidence, even though Steele had already been discounted as an unreliable FBI source who leaked information to the media. On its own, the Nunes memo doesn’t prove much. But days later, Senators Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham released a heavily redacted memo that appears to corroborate many of the claims made in the Nunes memo. The Grassley/Graham memo said that the unverified Steele dossier made up the bulk of the evidence used to secure the initial FISA warrant (and three successive renewals) to surveil Page. Even though they knew that the Steele dossier was opposition research funded by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the DNC, the FBI failed to verify the contents of the dossier before submitting it as evidence to obtain a FISA warrant. Steele appears to have used high-ranking Russian officials as sources for this Democratic-funded dossier that ironically alleged that the Republican candidate was colluding with the Russians to influence the 2016 election.[10]
