I just wanted to take a brief moment and remind everyone that there is an ACTIVE investigation into the Clinton Foundation happening right now.
At least that is if you believe the report from CNN from exactly one year ago today.
And I am not aware of any updated story saying the investigation has been abandoned or concluded.
So what does that mean? It means it’s still ongoing and probably continuing to amass information!
Keep the faith friends!
Here is that report from CNN from exactly one year ago:
Federal authorities are actively investigating allegations of corruption related to the Clinton Foundation, the charity of Bill and Hillary Clinton, according to a US official briefed on the matter.
The FBI and federal prosecutors are looking into whether donors to the foundation were improperly promised policy favors or special access to Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state in exchange for donations to the charity’s coffers, as well as whether tax-exempt funds were misused, the official said.
The investigation, led by the FBI field office in Little Rock, Arkansas, is being overseen by the US attorney’s office in the state, according to the source.
The inquiry was first reported by the The Hill, which cited law enforcement sources and a witness who was interviewed.
It’s unclear precisely what, if any, new evidence ignited the current federal investigation, after initial inquiries had stalled prior to the 2016 election.
The Justice Department declined to comment to CNN, citing a general policy of not confirming or denying the existence of active investigations. The US attorney’s office in Arkansas declined to comment.
A representative for the foundation dismissed the substance of the allegations as unfounded.
“Time after time, the Clinton Foundation has been subjected to politically motivated allegations, and time after time these allegations have been proven false,” Craig Minassian said in a statement to CNN. “The Clinton Foundation has demonstrably improved the lives of millions of people across America and around the world while earning top ratings from charity watchdog groups in the process. There are real issues in our society needing attention that the Clinton Foundation works hard to solve every day. So we’re going to stay focused on what really matters.”
The current probe of the foundation comes at a sensitive time for the Justice Department under the Trump administration, as President Donald Trump continues to regularly demand investigations of his former political rival while the DOJ has stayed silent.
Some Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill have cheered Trump on, while others within the party (and many Democrats) have raised concerns in recent months that Trump is failing to observe customary norms about the independence of the Justice Department when it comes to investigative work, particularly after he said earlier this week that Clinton aide Huma Abedinshould be jailed.
During the campaign, Trump supporter Jeff Sessions, then an Alabama senator and now the attorney general, suggested that Clinton used her high position as secretary of state to “extort” international governments for her family’s foundation.
“The fundamental thing is you can not be secretary of state of the United States of America and use that position to extort or seek contributions to your private foundation,” he told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota on “New Day” in 2016. “That is a fundamental violation of law and that does appear to have happened.”
At that time, a Clinton spokesman denied the allegations of corruption.
“The fact remains that Hillary Clinton never took action as secretary of state because of donations to the Clinton Foundation,” campaign spokesman Josh Schwerin said.
Yet the current inquiry into the Clinton Foundation is, at least in part, a continuation of a probe that originated before the 2016 presidential election.
CNN reported in November 2016 that FBI agents had opened preliminary inquiries into whether there had been any impropriety in the foundation’s dealings with donors, causing tensions within the bureau and the Justice Department.
During the Obama administration, criminal division leaders at the FBI met with the Justice Department’s public integrity section to discuss whether to move forward on full-blown investigations of the foundation, including the ability to subpoena records.
While at the time Justice officials determined there wasn’t sufficient evidence to proceed, they agreed with the FBI that agents be allowed to continue their work with the option to pursue more actively if they found additional evidence. There were also concerns within the Justice Department about the close proximity to the election, CNN reported at the time.
“It’s just a message of ‘hold right now until after the elections — no subpoenas issued, no interviews,'” one law enforcement official familiar with the thinking told CNN at the time.
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Here's more, from The Hill:
The Justice Department has launched a new inquiry into whether the Clinton Foundation engaged in any pay-to-play politics or other illegal activities while Hillary Clinton served as secretary of State, law enforcement officials and a witness tells The Hill.
FBI agents from Little Rock, Ark., where the foundation was started, have taken the lead in the investigation and have interviewed at least one witness in the last month, and law enforcement officials said additional activities are expected in the coming weeks.
The officials, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said the probe is examining whether the Clintons promised or performed any policy favors in return for largesse to their charitable efforts or whether donors made commitments of donations in hopes of securing government outcomes.
The probe may also examine whether any tax-exempt assets were converted for personal or political use and whether the foundation complied with applicable tax laws, the officials said.
One witness recently interviewed by the FBI described the session to The Hill as “extremely professional and unquestionably thorough” and focused on questions about whether donors to Clinton charitable efforts received any favorable treatment from the Obama administration on a policy decision previously highlighted in media reports.
The witness discussed his interview solely on the grounds of anonymity. He said the agents were from Little Rock and their questions focused on government decisions and discussions of donations to Clinton entities during the time Hillary Clinton led President Obama's State Department.
The FBI office in Little Rock referred a reporter Thursday to Washington headquarters, where officials declined any official comment.
Clinton's chief spokesman, Nick Merrill, on Friday morning excoriated the FBI for re-opening the case, calling the probe "disgraceful" and suggesting it was nothing more than a political distraction from President Trump's Russia controversies.
"Let’s call this what it is: a sham," Merrill said. "This is a philanthropy that does life-changing work, which Republicans have tried to turn into a political football. It began with a now long-debunked project spearheaded by Steve Bannon during the presidential campaign. It continues with Jeff Sessions doing Trump’s bidding by heeding his calls to meddle with a department that is supposed to function independently."
Judicial Watch Just Uncovered Hundreds of Thousands of Taxpayer Dollars Spent on Pelosi Trips!
And from the AP, it was reported that Andrew McCabe misled investigators regarding Hillary Clinton:
Andrew McCabe, the fired FBI deputy director, misled investigators and his own boss about his role in a news media disclosure about Hillary Clinton just days before the 2016 presidential election and authorized the release of information to “advance his personal interests,” according to a Justice Department watchdog report.
President Donald Trump, already furious over a forthcoming book from fired FBI Director James Comey, lashed out after the report’s release by saying McCabe had “LIED! LIED! LIED!”
The inspector general report concludes that McCabe allowed FBI officials to disclose nonpublic information to a Wall Street Journal reporter for a story about an investigation into the Clinton Foundation, violating agency rules, and then misled FBI officials when questioned about it. It also reveals starkly contradictory accounts from McCabe and Comey about how the conversations with the reporter had come to take place.
McCabe, who was fired two days before his scheduled retirement last month, denied the report’s allegations in a detailed rebuttal statement. He said that when he believed his answers to the inspector general were misunderstood, he went back and tried to correct them.
McCabe’s statement noted that as deputy director he had full authority to authorize sharing information with the media and said he permitted subordinates to do so in this case to correct a false narrative that he had tried to stymie an FBI probe into the Clinton Foundation.
The conversation “was done to protect the institutional reputation of the FBI as a non-political and professional investigative agency, and therefore was squarely within the public interest exception to the FBI’s prohibition on sharing sensitive material,” the statement said.
McCabe has also said his dismissal was part of the Trump administration’s “ongoing war” on the FBI and special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, adding that he was singled out because of the “role I played, the actions I took, and the events I witnessed in the aftermath” of Comey’s firing.
The inspector general report does not square with the Republican narrative of the FBI as a politically biased institution, since the Oct. 30, 2016, story contained derogatory information about Clinton and underscored FBI interest in investigating her foundation. But its conclusion may also be hard for Democrats to embrace, given its harshly critical suggestion that McCabe had put his personal reputation above the interests of the FBI.
Regardless, the report immediately provided fodder for Trump’s public attacks on McCabe, a longtime target of the president’s ire, especially because of revelations that his wife, during a failed state Senate run, had accepted campaign contributions in 2015 from the political action committee of then-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a close Clinton ally.
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