How the FBI Helped Sink Clinton’s Campaign
Public statements from former FBI Director James Comey, as well as an internal investigation focusing on former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, have shed light on the extent to which leaks from the Bureau influenced a series of late-October decisions that damaged Hillary Clinton’s chances in the 2016 election.
Pressure from the FBI officials investigating the Clinton Foundation, who leaked their frustrations to the press, affected both Comey’s decision to make his late-October announcement that the Clinton email probe had been reopened, and according to the Department of Justice Inspector General, McCabe’s decision to publicly confirm the existence of the Clinton Foundation probe to The Wall Street Journal. Both decisions were made under a torrent of conservative criticism, from Trump himself, who called the Clinton email inquiry “rigged,” and from the conservative press, which speculated that the Bureau was deliberately going easy on Clinton.
In each case, FBI officials violated Justice Department about investigations close to
