Revelations About the FBI’s Delay on Clinton Emails May Be Less Than They Seem

 

Reports have examined the lag in examining Hillary Clinton’s emails just before the 2016 election. But the question inside the FBI wasn’t whether to reveal the emails quickly — it was whether it was proper to reveal them at all.

by Peter Elkind

Media reports this week have focused fresh attention on how the Federal Bureau of Investigation managed the dramatic discovery — five weeks before the 2016 presidential election — of what seemed to be a fresh trove of Hillary Clinton emails and the delay in investigating them that ensued. The articles are fueling Republican charges of an FBI cabal, intent on protecting the Democratic nominee.

Yet the latter view is contradicted by the evidence gathered in a multi-month ProPublica investigation last year that examined the FBI’s Clinton investigation. That article found that, indeed, crucial weeks dribbled away before the FBI took action — but there was no sign that any particular individual was intentionally stalling or that the delay was politically motivated.

This week’s stories, by The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, have zeroed in on the FBI’s then deputy director, Andrew McCabe, who reportedly took three weeks or a month (depending on which account you believe) to order an examination of the new emails after an agent stumbled across them during a sex crimes investigation of Anthony Weiner, then the estranged husband of Clinton deputy Huma Abedin. Both stories report that the Justice Department inspector general — in the midst of a broad investigation of how the FBI and Justice Department managed the probe — is examining McCabe’s role.

The Post, quoting unidentified sources, reported that the inspector general is “focused” on why McCabe “appeared not to act for about three weeks on a request to examine a batch of Hillary Clinton-related emails…” The Journal notes that “Republicans and critics of the FBI have suggested the bureau may have sat on the emails to avoid hurting Mrs. Clinton” and are “especially suspicious of Mr. McCabe.”

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Source: ProPublica