Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton discussed FBI Director James Comey’s testimony to Congress with SiriusXM host Alex Marlow on Thursday’s Breitbart News Daily.
Hillary Clinton has blamed Comey for her 2016 election loss, but Marlow argued that if Comey had concealed the FBI’s discovery that Clinton was handling classified material irresponsibly – in the most spectacular instance, allowing it to be forwarded to disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner – it would have been “the end of the FBI as we know it.”
“You put your finger on it – the end of the FBI as we know it,” Fitton agreed. “Comey is very interested in protecting his own reputation and why he should have done X or why he should have done Y.”
“In the final analysis, what happened was that Comey has repeatedly and improperly protected Hillary Clinton and her top people from the consequences of their criminal behavior by coloring the law, misstating the law, and focusing on everything but the elephant in the living room: why didn’t he prosecute her? Why didn’t he recommend a prosecution? Why was immunity granted to all of these individuals? Why is it he said that he needed to prove intent, when in fact all they really needed was gross negligence, which was proven beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt, and he probably had the intent there anyway?” he asked.
“Looking at the testimony generally yesterday, Alex, I just was reassured that Judicial Watch and all the critics of the way the Justice Department and the FBI handled this during the Obama administration are right, that the investigation into Hillary Clinton needs to be opened. He keeps on telling us other reasons why it needs to be opened, by disclosing additional crimes that his FBI has been covering up for eight months now. For instance, Huma Abedin mishandled classified information in sending it along to someone unauthorized to see, review it, or have it – Anthony Weiner, her husband,” said Fitton.
Marlow recalled the “surreal reversal” of Comey’s famous press conference, in which he laid out a compelling case for indicting Clinton – and then said he would not indict her.
“But the media has set the narrative, Tom, which is that he should actually be apologizing for saying anything negative about Her Highness Hillary Clinton, and not the way you and I are seeing it, which is that still we don’t know why she isn’t indicted, given all that we’ve learned,” he said.
“That’s right,” Fitton agreed. “I can understand why that letter was concerning to those people who were in the middle of a campaign. Mrs. Clinton’s conduct was requiring an FBI investigation, but the scandal is the FBI investigation was half-baked.”
He said Judicial Watch litigation has revealed that “the FBI was using Judicial Watch documents that we’ve gotten through the Freedom of Information Act to question some of the witnesses in the Clinton investigation.”
“Why haven’t they gotten them on their own, through grand juries or subpoenas or other law enforcement action?” he asked. “They seem to be following our lead here. I don’t think Comey’s heart was in it. He was always concerned, and he reaffirmed that yesterday, about getting involved in politics. If he was nervous about a letter getting involved in politics, can you imagine what he would have been nervous about if an indictment was in the offing, something that he wanted to pursue in the face of what he confirmed to be Justice Department interference and lack of good faith?”
“He’s just highlighting the fact that A) he shouldn’t be FBI Director, and B) the Justice Department was so thoroughly corrupt that he couldn’t even trust them to tell you what the time of day was, and C) that the investigation into Hillary Clinton needs to be reopened by someone independent and serious, and Comey should have nothing to do with it,” Fitton contended.
“There is precedent for this. I recall at the beginning of the Obama administration – you may remember this – remember the investigation into the four CIA saps who were charged with using enhanced interrogation techniques? They had been exonerated by the Bush administration. The Obama administration came in and re-initiated a special prosecution, an investigation of them. This is what should be done with Hillary Clinton,” he advised.
Marlow asked about the new standard of “criminal intent” as a requirement for indictment, which seems to apply only to “rich and powerful” individuals like Hillary Clinton.
“I don’t know why Mr. Comey is falsely stating what the law is under oath again before Congress,” Fitton replied. “There is no intent needed to prosecute someone for the mishandling of classified information. Just imagine, if someone is so careless about classified information that they leave it on the Internet equivalent of a park bench, of course they’re going to get prosecuted, and they should. That’s what Hillary Clinton did.”
“Not only that, but let’s say they said, ‘Let’s be sure because it’s going to be tough to prosecute her, let’s be sure that we have more than just the gross negligence standard that the law requires. Let’s say that we need the intent standard,’” he continued. “Well, Mrs. Clinton was warned repeatedly – again, uncovered by Judicial Watch documents the FBI had – not to use a system separate from the State Department system because of the security concerns. She acknowledged those warnings and did it anyway. No matter how you slice it, they had the case.”
Another Judicial Watch revelation noted by Marlow was the discovery of emails from Abedin that show “the Clinton Foundation and State Department were linked together on Haiti,” a relationship earlier revealed by Breitbart News Editor-at-Large Peter Schweizer’s book Clinton Cash.
“There were some emails showing that after the terrible Haitian earthquake in 2010, there was an almost immediate conference call involving the Clinton Foundation,” Fitton explained.
“Now, Mrs. Clinton promised that sort of thing wouldn’t happen – that the Clinton Foundation and the State Department, there would be a bright line demarcating, and the two wouldn’t meet. But instead they did meet, and obviously we later found out that Bill Clinton and his foundation effectively ran U.S. government operations down there, despite Mrs. Clinton’s promises that they’d have nothing to do with government when she was in the Secretary of State position, because that’s what she had to do in order to get the position of Secretary of State – promising a bright line between the Clinton Foundation and her Secretary of State office, because both Republicans and Democrats and even the White House, Barack Obama’s White House, had concerns about it,” he said.
“And by the way, the documents we have this week also show more classified information being shared with Huma Abedin and others that Hillary Clinton was sending and receiving on her system. Unbelievable, unbelievable,” Fitton exclaimed.
Marlow criticized President Trump’s announcement that Clinton would not be investigated further, and asked how such a determination could be made when relevant facts of the case are still being uncovered to this day.
“The charitable interpretation of that is that it was a reactive comment, and he doesn’t really believe it,” Fitton said of Trump’s statement on the matter. “I really don’t think he thinks that’s the case. Technically speaking, he can’t prosecute Hillary Clinton. The operational question is, is the Justice Department going to be staffed now by people in the Trump administration who understand what their roles and duties are, and their obligations are, to the American people and do their jobs?”
“All I’m asking is for is the thumb of politicians to be taken off the scales of justice, and allow a prosecution, a regular one, to proceed against Hillary Clinton,” he declared. “Certainly an investigation or a grand jury, a serious one. That doesn’t necessarily mean that she’ll be prosecuted, but the American people will be reassured that the rigged game that went on last year isn’t going to happen again, and there’s going to be finally a full vetting of what went on.”
Tom Fitton is the president of Judicial Watch and author of the best-selling book Clean House: Exposing Our Government’s Secrets and Lies.
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
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