You Won’t Believe the Leak That Kicked Off an FBI Investigation

The 2016 election season might be unique in the number of iconic events associated with it. All have some, even the bland and lackluster 1996 campaign had Bob Dole falling off a stage and utter the now meaningless “where is the outrage.” (I say meaningless, because the Clinton era proved conclusively that general outrage, as opposed to partisan outrage, was no longer possible in America.) The one event that will forever be associated with the Clinton campaign last year is the famous “accidental” meeting between Loretta Lynch, whose Justice Department was investigating Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified information, and Hillary’s nominal spouse, former president Bill Clinton, at a Phoenix airport.

The meeting was supposed to have been secret. It leaked. And when it did, the FBI went batsh** crazy in a way they never did while investigating Hillary Clinton, looking for how the DNC emails became public, or investigating the veracity of the Trump dossier.

In July 2016, Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the FBI for any documents concerning the meet-up between Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton. They were told none existed. Some were, however, found by Justice.

The Justice Department failed to comply and led to the FOIA lawsuit that Judicial Watch says paved the way to it expecting a new tranche of documents.

The FBI did not originally uncover documents concerning the tarmac meeting, according to Fox News. However, the Justice Department did find email correspondence related to the meeting in a related case in 2017.

In response, the FBI sent a letter dated August 10, 2017 that said, “Upon further review, we subsequently determined potentially responsive documents may exist. As a result, your [FOIA] request has been reopened…” and added they are investigating any “responsive material.”

What the documents revealed was that the FBI pulled out all the stops to find out who let the press know about the meeting and to punish the person. This is the story that started it all.

An exclusive interview with a security source who was present at the unplanned meeting Monday night on a Phoenix tarmac between former President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Lorretta Lynch has shed additional light on an unusual summit that is embroiling the AG in charges of favoritism. As attorney general, Lynch heads the Department of Justice just as it is deciding whether to proceed with charges against Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton over her use of a private email server during her tenure as President Obama’s secretary of state.

The source has decades of experience providing security to government officials. The source spoke to the Observer for 20 minutes and answered follow-up questions via text message on the condition that no further details be revealed, including even gender, given the possibility of losing his or her job as an active overseer of security arrangements. This person was on-hand for the entirety of the meeting and some of its aftermath.

According to this source, whose credentials were checked and confirmed by the Observer with sources inside both the FBI and the United States Secret Service, the attorney general was caught completely off guard by the meeting and the source dismisses suggestions that have been raised alleging that she waited there to see Bill Clinton or accommodated his request to see him. In fact, it seems from this source that it was Bill Clinton who was maneuvering for face time with the attorney general, because his plane had been scheduled to leave before hers arrived.

The Daily Caller:

The internal FBI emails show that an FBI official in the security division was forwarded the Observer article on July 2, 2016, the same day that Hillary Clinton was interviewed by FBI agents.

The emails show that FBI agents believed that the source for the article was a Phoenix police officer who helped Lynch and Clinton’s motorcades.

“Needless to say that I have contacted the Phoenix office and will contact the local’s [sic] who assisted in an attempt to stem any further damage. This is exactly why our Discretion and Judgement are the foundation’ of the AG’s trust in our team, which is why we can never violate that trust, like the source did in this article,” wrote one FBI security division agent.

Other emails show frustration within the FBI over the article, which asserted that Clinton waited on the airport tarmac for Lynch to arrive at the Phoenix airport.

“We need to find that guy and bring him or her before a supervisor,” read one email.

“Hopefully we will find out and at the very minimum, make sure he never works on any detail,”

One agent asked if “there will be a need for non-disclosure agreements in the future?”

“That might not be a band idea, given the circumstances,” the official responded.

“Unfortunately, this article is a breach of security protocol and I am addressing it with the Phoenix division to make to make certain that they pursuit [sic] this and identify the source of the breach,” the security division official wrote.

What’s instructive is that none of these people apparently had any concern about the meeting and a great deal of concern that they could not keep hidden from public view the activities of a cabinet secretary whose meetings are supposed to be available to the public. One has to wonder if “Discretion and Judgement” extends to misprision of a felony, or, given what we know about the antics of Robert Mueller’s team, does it extend to Republicans, too?

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