Internal Justice Department probe eyes McCabe's role in final weeks of 2016 election

[DonViejo]

Source: The Washington Post




By Devlin Barrett and Karoun Demirjian January 30 at 4:01 PM

The Justice Department’s inspector general has been focused for months on why Andrew McCabe, as the No. 2 official at the FBI, appeared not to act for about three weeks on a request to examine a batch of Hillary Clinton-related emails found in the latter stages of the 2016 election campaign, according to people familiar with the matter.

The inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, has been asking witnesses why FBI leadership seemed unwilling to move forward on the examination of emails found on the laptop of former congressman Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) until late October — about three weeks after first being alerted to the issue, according to these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

A key question of the internal investigation is whether McCabe or anyone else at the FBI wanted to avoid taking action on the laptop findings until after the Nov. 8 election, these people said. It is unclear whether the inspector general has reached any conclusions on that point.

A major line of inquiry for the inspector general has been trying to determine who at the FBI and the Justice Department knew about the Clinton emails on the Weiner laptop, and when they learned about them. McCabe is a central figure in those inquiries, these people said.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/internal-justice-department-probe-eyes-mccabes-role-in-final-weeks-of-2016-election/2018/01/30/db2ea8f0-05c7-11e8-8777-2a059f168dd2_story.html

[DeminPennswoods]

1. I'm generally wary of IG investigation conclusions

I saw a few during my time in DoD. I always felt that they already had a conclusion in mind when they were begun and that conclusion was usually justified by their work product.

[bucolic_frolic]

2. I believe we would have been better off if the emails story had broken weeks earlier

There would at least have been time to rebut, confound, clarify, answer.

An October Surprise late in the month is a hatchet job.

[roscoeroscoe]

7. This is the real story here

Ever since last fall, when this mess 'suddenly' came out, the timing seemed very fishy. The New York FBI investigators sat on this information until... the perfect moment to change the momentum of the race.

[OliverQ]

3. This is supposedly why Wray got rid of McCabe, which smacks in the face of the

twitter feed The Hoarse Whisperer posted about Wray being a decent guy.

Who do we believe? Personally, if you accepted a Trump nomination I think you're scum and can't be trusted.

[Freethinker65]

4. Um. Because the emails were not new. They were cached from when Huma logged in to check her emails

The question is, why did the Justice Department/FBI disclose to the public about Weiner's computer with the emails and not once disclose to the voters that Russia was potentially messing with the upcoming election and some of Trump's campaign staff, if not Trump himself, was currently under investigation?


Oh, that's right. Obama went with the info to McConnell, and McConnell refused.

Release a fucking memo about that!

[still_one]

5. Exactly. This is a B.S. story. They knew months before these emails were duplicates from months

before

[yodermon]

6. McCabe is still being slandered. The culprit(s) are Guiliani and the corrupt NY FBI Field office.

Link to tweet

I recommend reading the whole thread.

[byronius]

8. +1

[bucolic_frolic]

9. They never clean house

Wasn't their problems in the Boston office at one time? That went on for decades?

I know, I should pay closer attention to what I read in the past, so as to remember it. But, you know .... a gazillion things to read, do, see, hear ....

[tblue37]

11. Whitey Bulger? nt

[bucolic_frolic]

12. Maybe

Something about the Feds knew they had done some things wrong, but decided they couldn't tell anybody about specific incidents because it would reflect badly upon all of them. So sort of like an institutional infallibility.

[DallasNE]

10. Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda

At times the description is faulty and what is not said is glaring.

The FBI did not have a warrant so all they could look at is the metadata. They would then have to match that up with the metadata on Clinton's server to determine if there was a legal basis for securing a warrant for a case that was then closed. The file they had was a backup file so it would first have to be restored to be of value. If proprietary software was used then they would possibly need to acquire authorization to run a restore. That all can take some time.

Not said, but what they were actually looking for was the email Clinton deleted that she said was personal - the date of the backup was from before Clinton started the delete process. Most of the email was duplicates of what the FBI already had. They did find some of the email Clinton deleted and one example was cited where the two women discussed what they were going to wear to a function they were both attending that night. I believe they even found a handful of work related email that had been deleted but the breach was small - another process that could take some time in determining whether it was sufficient to proceed. In the end, they said "no".

This was a highly sensitive case so extra care was essential. One thing they can't claim is that the delay helped the Clinton campaign - it is probably the biggest factor causing us to say "President Trump" today. The thing they could get McCabe on is the FBI's failure to get the warrant to examine the content of the email.