According to sources intimately involved with the year-long probe into Hillary Clinton’s private email server, FBI Director James Comey’s decision to not recommend charges against the Democratic presidential nominee after her egregious mishandling of state department material as secretary of state has sent the team involved in the investigation into near revolt.
A new Fox News report details the ugly situation behind the scenes at the FBI, where “career agents and attorneys on the case unanimously believed the Democratic presidential nominee should have been charged.” According to sources, Comey’s stunning decision not to do so left the investigative team collectively “dismayed and disgusted.”
“No trial level attorney agreed, no agent working the case agreed, with the decision not to prosecute — it was a top-down decision,” an unnamed source involved with the FBI investigation told Fox News.
“It was unanimous that we all wanted [Clinton’s] security clearance yanked,” another unnamed FBI official told the outlet. “It is safe to say the vast majority felt she should be prosecuted, We were floored while listening to the FBI briefing because Comey laid it all out, and then said ‘but we are doing nothing,’ which made no sense to us.”
The sources made clear that Comey was to blame for the senseless failure to prosecute.
“Basically, James Comey hijacked the DOJ’s role by saying ‘no reasonable prosecutor would bring this case,” the source explained to Fox. “The FBI does not decide who to prosecute and when, that is the sole province of a prosecutor — that never happens. I know zero prosecutors in the DOJ’s National Security Division who would not have taken the case to a grand jury. One was never even convened.”
As Fox points out, the New York Post recently published a similar story which cited several veteran FBI agents lamenting the damage Comey has done to the bureau’s credibility. Former FBI official Dennis V. Hughes blasted Comey and the bureau for having “politicized itself,” which he predicted would result in its reputation “suffer[ing] for a long time.”
“I hold Director Comey responsible,” said Hughes. Former agent Michael M. Biasello agreed, stating, “Comey has singlehandedly ruined the reputation of the organization.”
When Fox News asked for comment from the FBI, the agency simply pointed the outlet to Comey’s repeated public claims that politics had nothing to do with his decision not to charge the Democratic presidential nominee.
Read the full report here.