In a recent development, two prominent Republicans from the House and Senate have requested the FBI to consider declassifying eight thumb drives.
These drives reportedly contain documents related to the investigation of Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, and her use of a private email server for official business and classified information handling. The request was made by Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley of Iowa and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chair Rick Crawford of Arkansas to FBI Director Kash Patel.
According to a social media post penned by Grassley on Tuesday, as reported by the Daily Caller, these thumb drives have been stored in an "FBI offshoot office" since 2018. This office is speculated to be the Washington Field Office Northern Virginia Resident Agency, located approximately an hour's drive from Washington, D.C., based on recently declassified documents.
The thumb drives are said to contain a plethora of emails allegedly obtained by Russian intelligence from Clinton, former President Barack Obama, and members of Congress. This information was revealed in a set of documents declassified last week. These documents suggest a conspiracy by Obama and his top spy agency chiefs to link President Donald Trump to Russia.
Among the recently released files is the classified annex of a Department of Justice Inspector Generals (DOJ OIGs) report. This report scrutinized the integrity of the 2015-2016 FBI investigation into Clintons use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state, an investigation codenamed Midyear Exam.
Despite the investigation, no indictments were made. The annex reveals that the FBI obtained eight thumb drives of documents from a source codenamed T1 with potential relevance to the Midyear investigation.
However, these were never reviewed, partly due to Obamas White House asserting executive privilege. The report states that foreign intelligence services, likely Russian, had obtained the emails through cyber espionage, and T1 had returned them to the American intelligence community.
The first five thumb drives contained documents obtained through cyber intrusions into the State Department. These could have illuminated whether Clintons use of a private server compromised national security. They included emails with the terms Clinton and clintonemail.com, but the FBI never conducted an in-depth search.
The thumb drives also contained emails from President Barack Obama. On Obamas last full day in office, then-White House Counsel W. Neil Eggleston wrote a letter to the FBI asserting a continuing right of the presidents representatives to protect potentially privileged information on the thumb drives.
Information about the remaining three thumb drives is limited. They could potentially contain information about Obamas White House, Congress, and the State Department.
Another file released by U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently reveals that the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service obtained emails from the U.S. government, political groups, and think tanks. This was part of a House Intelligence Committee investigation into the lack of evidence supporting the idea that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted Trump to win the 2016 election.
The emails allegedly revealed concerns within the Democratic Party about Clintons physical and mental health, including daily use of heavy tranquilizers during the 2016 campaign. The report states that Obama was among those concerned.
Login