New York Times Dismissed Trump Claims of FBI Revolt as ‘Baseless’

The Associated Press
The Associated Press

A new report by the Wall Street Journal describes high tensions within the Federal Bureau of Investigation over investigations of Hillary Clinton — a claim the New York Times once described as “baseless.”

The Journal‘s Devlin Barrett reports: “Even as the previous probe of Mrs. Clinton’s email use wound down in July, internal disagreements within the bureau and the Justice Department surrounding the Clintons’ family philanthropy heated up, according to people familiar with the matter.”

On Friday, the day the FBI revealed it would be re-opening the investigation on the basis of the new emails found on the Weiner computer, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump talked about a “revolt” within the agency.

The New York Times poured scorn on that claim, calling it “baseless”: “Handed a new opening against Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump used the moment to baselessly claim there had been an internal F.B.I. ‘revolt’ and made a sexually suggestive joke about Mr. Weiner,” the Times reported.

(The Times described the joke as follows: “‘As Podesta said, she’s got bad instincts,’ Mr. Trump said, distorting a comment in one of the thousands of Mr. Podesta’s hacked emails recently released by WikiLeaks. ‘Well, she’s got bad instincts when her emails are on Anthony Weiner’s wherever.'”)

Now, however, evidence appears to be emerging to support Trump’s claim.

According to the Journal report, the number of emails the FBI wants to search on Anthony Weiner’s laptop computer is 650,000. It is not clear how many of the 650,000 emails involve Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton; how many of those e-mails are work-related; or how many of them may have contained classified information.

The FBI is apparently awaiting for a warrant to search the computer for emails relating to the Clinton investigation. Currently it only has a warrant to search for child pornography, the Journal reports.

The report also confirms that the FBI has been investigating the Clinton foundation — and internal disagreements about how to proceed.

Some of those disagreements, according to sources cited by the Journal, revolve around FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, whose wife, Dr. Jill McCabe, received nearly $500,000 in campaign funds from Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, a close Clinton ally.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. His new book, See No Evil: 19 Hard Truths the Left Can’t Handle, is available from Regnery through Amazon. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

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