FBI Officials Refuse To Reveal if They Met with Inspector General over Clinton Server
The FBI refuses to disclose whether or not it met with senior members of the Intelligence Community Inspector General on the subject of foreign intrusion of Secretary Hillary Clinton’s private server.
An FBI spokeswoman refused to confirm if Intelligence Community Inspector General officials — including Frank Rucker, its chief investigator — briefed top bureau officials about evidence of penetration of Clinton’s private server by a Chinese government intelligence operation. “We have no comment,” she told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Earlier Wednesday, an FBI spokesman released what appeared to be a categorical statement about the Clinton server: “The FBI has not found any evidence the servers were compromised,” the FBI stated.
The statement does not refute anything so far reported by TheDCNF, which has confirmed that the ICIG briefed top bureau officials on three separate occasions to warn the FBI of an “anomaly” they found in 30,000 inbound and outgoing emails. The report is based on an intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter. The anomaly showed a code embedded in Clinton’s server was producing in real time a “courtesy copy” to a third party.
The third party was a Chinese state-owned company based in Northern Virginia just outside of Washington, D.C., and was part of an ongoing Chinese government intelligence operation, according to two separate sources with direct knowledge of the matter.
According to one source, the last ICIG briefing was held in June 2016 about a month before former FBI Director James Comey said that he did not recommend any indictment of Clinton for mishandling classified materials.
Comey in that widely reported July 5, 2016 news conference said he did not find “direct evidence” that Clinton’s email domain was successfully hacked.
“We assess that we would be unlikely to see such direct evidence,” he said. “We do assess that hostile actors gained access to the private commercial email accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact from her personal account.”
“Given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal email account,” Comey told reporters at the news conference.
On Tuesday night, Presidential Donald Trump posted his first tweet on the subject:
He wrote a second tweet early Wednesday morning:
To bolster the bureau’s statement, the FBI spokeswoman referred TheDCNF to the June 2018 Justice Department Inspector General report that addressed the prospect of a foreign intruder.
That report, however, is less than definitive. Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department IG, noted an intrusion by foreign intelligence services was possible.
The FBI “investigation successfully determined classified information was improperly stored and transmitted on Clinton’s email server, and classified information was compromised by unauthorized individuals, to include foreign government’s or intelligence services, via cyber intrusion or other means (referring to compromises of email accounts associated with certain individuals who communicated with Clinton’s server, such as Sidney Blumenthal),” the IG concluded.
The report also indicated there were limitations of a forensic investigation which was carried out in 2017 by the Boston FBI Field Office’s Inspection Division, stating the structure of the investigation “and treatment of the investigation as a traditional espionage matter rather than a criminal investigation significantly hindered the ability of the investigative team to obtain full, accurate and timely information.”
Another FBI forensic agent told the Justice Department inspector general, he felt “fairly confident” there wasn’t an intrusion.
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience.
For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
A version of this article appeared on The Daily Caller News Foundation website.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.
