FBI agents interviewed Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin in December 2016, more than a month after the official close of the Clinton email probe and much more recently than previously believed.
The Washington Post reports that agents were interested in how Abedin and Clinton emails wound up on a laptop used by Abedin’s husband, Anthony Weiner.
The FBI discovered Abedin and Clinton emails on the laptop while conducting an investigation into Weiner’s contact with an underaged girl in September 2016. The Clinton email probe, which had been closed in July 2016, was reopened on Oct. 28. It was closed again on Nov. 6, two days before the election, after FBI officials determined that none of the emails on the laptop would warrant criminal charges.
Agents considered their investigation complete but they wanted to find out whether Abedin should have disclosed the laptop emails sooner, according to The Post. She was considered a witness in the initial investigation, rather than a target. That didn’t change after the interview, which was conducted around Christmas 2016, as investigators found no reason to charge the longtime Clinton aide.
An interview with Abedin was hinted at in text messages exchanged between former FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page.
As The Daily Caller News Foundation first reported in February, Strzok told Page on Dec. 13, 2016, about a conversation he had with the Department of Justice about an interview with Abedin.
“Told them we had to interview, no immunity,” he wrote.
“They said they thought that would get counsel to the point of saying she’s either taking the 5th in the [grand jury] or you need to give her immunity. I said that’s fine, please have discussions to get the decision to that point and I would run it up the chain.”
The Post confirmed that an interview did occur but that no immunity was granted. “There was never any suggestion by the government that Huma had done anything wrong,” Karen Dunn, Abedin’s lawyer, told The Post. “To the contrary, she was told that her full and voluntary cooperation as a witness in their investigation was appreciated. Having done her part to assist the government, Huma is a private citizen now and should be left to live her life in peace.”
Abedin was first interviewed as part of the Clinton email investigation in April 2016. As one of the top FBI investigators on the probe, Strzok conducted the interview along with Justice Department lawyer David Laufman. In the interview, Abedin may have given misleading statements about when she first learned about Clinton’s use of a private email server while serving as secretary of state. Emails showed that Abedin was aware of Clinton’s server use, yet she said in the FBI interview that she did not learn that Clinton used a private server until after they left the State Department.
Cheryl Mills, another Clinton aide, also denied knowing about the server while at the State Department. But Mills was also included on email exchanges where the server was discussed. Mills, unlike Abedin, received partial immunity from the Justice Department. She also served as Clinton’s attorney.
WILL THE REAL CHERYL MILLS PLEASE STAND UP?
CIRCA 2015 NYPost-— The job of Clinton damage control through a parade of scandals has fallen to her top aide (and perennial govt parasite) Cheryl Mills. Mills’ lack of cooperation is legendary. In fact, she’s been officially accused of both perjury and obstruction of justice.
Sworn affidavits, depositions and court rulings, as well as congressional reports and testimony, paint a picture of, to put it charitably, a brazenly dishonest cover-up specialist. Among Mills shenanigans:
<><> •As White House deputy counsel, Mills ordered Commerce Department officials to “withhold” from investigators emails and other documents detailing then-President Clinton’s and First Lady Hillary Clinton’s allegedly illegal selling of seats on foreign trade junkets for campaign cash, according to sworn statements by Commerce’s former FOIA chief.
“Ms. Mills, in her position as deputy counsel to the president, advised Commerce officials to withhold certain documents,” testified Sonya Stewart Gilliam in a July 2000 sworn affidavit taken by Judicial Watch, a government watchdog group in Washington. “
The Commerce Department’s collaboration with White House Deputy Counsel Mills on these matters was, in my experience, highly irregular and at variance with normal
procedures.
<><> •At the same time, a federal judge ruled that Mills “failed miserably” to take proper steps to search for and recover 1.8 million Executive Office of the President and Office of the First Lady emails under subpoena in the Monica Lewinsky and Filegate scandal investigations, after computer contractors discovered them mysteriously missing from the automated White House archiving system. Mills, who was in charge of finding the lost email, conveniently made “the most critical error” in recovering them.
<><> US District Judge Royce Lamberth concluded in a 63-page opinion, adding that he found Mills actions “loathsome.”
In fact, Judicial Watch accused Mills of orchestrating a “cover-up” in what became known as “Email-gate.” Her court testimony in the case, during which she repeatedly
answered “I don’t have a recollection,” sounds like an interview with an amnesia patient. (In the end, the emails were never recovered).
<><> •In another scandal, Mills “concealed” so many subpoenaed emails and other documents detailing allegedly illegal fundraising activity between the White House and the DNC — specifically, Hillary’s illegal integration of White House and DNC computer databases — that staff lawyers for the House Govt Oversight Committee in 1998 sent a criminal referral to the Justice Dept demanding federal prosecutors charge Mills with obstruction of justice and perjury. “Ms. Mills knowingly and willfully obstructed the investigative authority of this committee by withholding documents,” the panel concluded in a 647-page investigative report.
“Moreover, when this obstruction was brought to light in a hearing before the committee, Ms. Mills lied under oath about the documents and the circumstances surrounding their nonproduction.”
<><> •In October 2012, Mills sorted through key Benghazi documents and decided which ones to withhold from an independent review board. She also leaned on witnessses.
Deputy ambassador to Libya Gregory Hicks testified before Congress in 2013 that Mills told him in an angry phone call to stop cooperating with investigators.
<><> •On behalf of the Clintons, Mills negotiated the weak conflict-of-interest rules for disclosing foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation with the Obama administration. She also reportedly helped broker international payments to the group. In short, Mills “is in the middle of it,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said.
EXCERPT-—http://nypost.com/2015/05/17/hillary-clintons-consigliere-covers-up-for-her-scandals/