The FBI has reportedly obtained a warrant to dig through hundreds of thousands of newly-discovered emails allegedly related to a private server used by Hillary Clinton. It’s unclear if the renewed probe will achieve any results before US Election Day.
The search warrant allows the bureau to scour through some 650,000 emails discovered on a laptop belonging to ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner and apparently also used by his wife, Clinton’s closest aide Huma Abedin. The probe is set to check if any of the texts are related to the reopened investigation of the former secretary of state’s private email use.
The authorization came two days after FBI Director James Comey finally revealed the existence of the emails stash which was reportedly discovered by the agency in early October.
“The process has begun,” a federal law enforcement official told the New York Times.
The new emails were discovered as part of a separate ‘sexting’ probe into former Representative Anthony Weiner (D-New York). His electronic devices were seized during that investigation.
Abedin claims she has no knowledge of any of her emails being on the electronic device belonging to her husband, CBS News has learned on Sunday. A source told the network that newly-discovered emails belonged to Weiner, not his wife, who left her husband earlier this year over his sexting addiction.
Clinton's longtime aide is allegedly cooperating with the investigation and “seemed surprised that the emails were there,”according to the CBS source.
On Friday, FBI Director Comey announced that due to new findings, the criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server had been reopened, as he sent a letter notifying Congress of the email review.
The review, which is likely to take weeks, will seek to determine whether any of those messages are work-related, and whether they include either classified information or important new evidence in the probe aimed to check whether Clinton’s actions undermined US national security.
More stunning is just how many emails were found on Weiner's computer. And while one can only imagine the content of some of the more persona ones, the WSJ writes that 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, people familiar with the matter said, 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. Mr. Weiner has denied sending explicit or indecent messages to the teenager.
As reported yesterday, it appears that there are potentially tens of thousands of Abedin linked emails on Weiner's computer:
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.
The WSJ then connects the dots between how the Weiner emails were linked to the Clinton reopening of the Clinton probe, despite Loretta Lynch's and the DOJ's vocal urges not to do so:
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.
But wait it gets better.
Recall that this is the same Andrew Mcabe whose wife the Wall Street Journal reported last week 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.
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.
Which brings us to the second big topic: the Clinton Foundation, and how the DOJ made sure that particular probe never made the light of day. At the same time as the Clinton server was being investigated, other Clinton-related investigations were under way within the FBI, and they have been the subject of internal debate for months.
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.
The WSJ touches on something fasctinating: 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. So where did that trail go? Apparently nowhere.
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. 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.
Source:
https://www.rt.com/usa/364774-clinton-weiner-abedin-emails/
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-30/fbi-scour-through-650000-emails-found-weiners-laptop
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“The process has begun,” a federal law enforcement official told the New York Times.
The new emails were discovered as part of a separate ‘sexting’ probe into former Representative Anthony Weiner (D-New York). His electronic devices were seized during that investigation.
Abedin claims she has no knowledge of any of her emails being on the electronic device belonging to her husband, CBS News has learned on Sunday. A source told the network that newly-discovered emails belonged to Weiner, not his wife, who left her husband earlier this year over his sexting addiction.
Clinton's longtime aide is allegedly cooperating with the investigation and “seemed surprised that the emails were there,”according to the CBS source.
On Friday, FBI Director Comey announced that due to new findings, the criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server had been reopened, as he sent a letter notifying Congress of the email review.
The review, which is likely to take weeks, will seek to determine whether any of those messages are work-related, and whether they include either classified information or important new evidence in the probe aimed to check whether Clinton’s actions undermined US national security.
More stunning is just how many emails were found on Weiner's computer. And while one can only imagine the content of some of the more persona ones, the WSJ writes that 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, people familiar with the matter said, 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. Mr. Weiner has denied sending explicit or indecent messages to the teenager.
As reported yesterday, it appears that there are potentially tens of thousands of Abedin linked emails on Weiner's computer:
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.
The WSJ then connects the dots between how the Weiner emails were linked to the Clinton reopening of the Clinton probe, despite Loretta Lynch's and the DOJ's vocal urges not to do so:
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.
But wait it gets better.
Recall that this is the same Andrew Mcabe whose wife the Wall Street Journal reported last week 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.
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.
Which brings us to the second big topic: the Clinton Foundation, and how the DOJ made sure that particular probe never made the light of day. At the same time as the Clinton server was being investigated, other Clinton-related investigations were under way within the FBI, and they have been the subject of internal debate for months.
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.
The WSJ touches on something fasctinating: 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. So where did that trail go? Apparently nowhere.
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. 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.
Source:
https://www.rt.com/usa/364774-clinton-weiner-abedin-emails/
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-30/fbi-scour-through-650000-emails-found-weiners-laptop
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