Internal FBI emails show bureau officials sought to expedite a Hillary Clinton lawyer’s request for information weeks before the 2016 presidential election.
Conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch released 218 pages of emails it obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit on Monday. The documents contain communications between former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, many of which relate to the FBI’s investigation of Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state.
Strzok, a former FBI agent and lead investigator in the Clinton email investigation, and Page, a former FBI lawyer, sent thousands of texts to each other about the Clinton and Trump-Russia investigations, sparking accusations of bias. Strzok was removed from the Russia investigation upon discovery of the texts and was later fired from the bureau.
Page said in one email that four reports on witness interviews, referred to by the bureau as 302s, “had never been written” in the Clinton emails investigation. The email did not disclose why the 302s were not written or to which witnesses they related.
Then-FBI General Counsel James Baker promised Clinton’s lawyer, David Kendall, that the FBI would move promptly to provide a copy of Clinton’s 302.
“I just spoke with David Kendall … I conveyed our view that in order to obtain the documents they are seeking they need to submit a request pursuant to the Privacy Act and FOIA,” Baker wrote on Aug. 16, 2016.
“I said they could submit a letter to me covering both statutes. They will send it in the morning. I said that we would process it expeditiously. David asked us to focus first on the Secretary’s 302. I said OK,” Baker said, adding that the FBI would “get the 302 out the door as soon as possible.”
In an email days later, Baker said he planned to let Kendall know beforehand when Clinton’s 302 would be made available online.
“I don’t see a problem with giving Kendall a heads up,” the FBI’s FOIA unit chief wrote days later.
The 302 was posted on the FBI’s website on Sept. 2, 2016.
Judicial Watch argued that the emails prove bureau officials gave Clinton “special treatment” before the 2016 presidential election.
“These incredible documents show the leadership of the FBI rushed to give Hillary Clinton her FBI interview report shortly before the election,” Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said in a statement. “And the documents also show the FBI failed to timely document interviews in the Clinton email ‘matter’ — further confirming the whole investigation was a joke.”
The FBI investigation into Clinton’s use of an unauthorized server, hosted in the basement of her home in Chappaqua, N.Y., came to a conclusion during the 2016 presidential election. Former FBI Director James Comey publicly recommended in 2016 that no charges be brought against Clinton, who was then the Democratic presidential nominee, but admonished Clinton and her colleagues for being “extremely careless” in handling classified information.
