Docs Reveal Shocking Lengths Obama, Biden Went To Get Trump

The Obama-Biden Administration prevented agents investigating Hillary Clinton from reviewing some eight thumb drives of intel based on purported concerns over executive and congressional privilege, newly released documents reveal. This reality renders last month’s revelation that the Biden Administration approved Special Counsel Jack Smith’s subpoenaing of congressional Republicans’ toll records even more appalling — and the Democrats’ weaponization of the criminal justice system even more obvious and outrageous.

Last week, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, released another tranche of documents he obtained through his relentless efforts to expose the weaponization of the Department of Justice. With whistleblowers feeding Grassley specifics of the Deep State’s nefarious doings, the Iowa Republican knew precisely which documents to request, as shown by the details contained in the nearly 100 pages of emails and timelines released one week ago. Those documents exposed efforts by the Obama Administration and DOJ and FBI holdovers under Trump 1.0 to obstruct the investigation into the Clinton Foundation.

A December 31, 2020 email from the then-U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, Cody Hiland, to Jonathan Ross, who served as Hiland’s first assistant under Trump 1.0, capsulizes the obstruction the duo faced while attempting to investigate the Clinton Foundation. “What a bizarre, unsettling time that was,” Hiland opened, adding that he was thankful Ross was “there to go through the fire” with him. 

“We’ve done what we can about the interference by DOJ and FBI leadership at the time with the FBI’s investigation,” Hiland wrote in the email he sent as he stepped down as U.S. attorney following Biden’s election in 2020.

In addition to that email, the document cache Grassley released last week revealed extensive obstruction into the investigation into Hillary Clinton first by the Obama Administration, but also continuing into Trump’s first term. But on his final day as U.S. attorney, Hiland focused on one specific detail: the Deep State’s secreting of classified appendices.

While Hiland’s December 31, 2020 email does not identify the appendices at issue, the thread below the email from the outgoing U.S. attorney does, with then-AUSA Ross referencing the fact “that despite numerous requests, Main Justice and the FBI refused to grant us access to the sensitive law enforcement appendices to the OIG report that was issued on 6/14/2018 titled ‘A Review of Various Actions by the FBI and DOJ in Advance of the 2016 Election.’” That OIG report detailed misconduct in the FBI’s handling of its Midyear Exam investigation into Clinton’s mishandling of classified documents.

Given Hiland and Ross’s focus on those two appendices, revisiting them seemed in order.

According to the OIG Report, the first appendix discussed “highly classified information relevant to the Midyear investigation” into Clinton’s mishandling of classified information. The second appendix, the OIG Report explained, contained a more fulsome version — including Law Enforcement Sensitive information — of Chapter Thirteen’s discussion concerning whether FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe violated his recusal obligations by working on various investigative matters related to Clinton.

In July of this year, after having sought the release of the first appendix for more than six years, Grassley succeeded in securing its declassification. The Iowa senator and godfather of whistleblowers then released the appendix, calling it the Clinton Annex. 

The press release Grassley issued with the Clinton Annex understandably stressed that the recently declassified appendix revealed “an extreme lack of effort and due diligence in the FBI’s investigation of former Secretary Clinton’s email usage and mishandling of highly classified information.” “Under Comey’s leadership, the FBI failed to perform fundamental investigative work and left key pieces of evidence on the cutting room floor,” Grassley wrote at the time.

But with last week’s release by Grassley revealing that the U.S. attorney’s office investigating the Clinton Foundation had sought — and been denied — access to that same appendix, it would seem the Clinton Annex held relevance beyond the FBI’s Midyear Exam investigation into the former Secretary of State’s mishandling of classified information. And sure enough, revisiting the Clinton Annex reveals the FBI under both Director Comey and Wray denied the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Arkansas access to important evidence related to the Clinton Foundation.

Specifically, the Clinton Annex detailed how a “source known as T1” provided the FBI eight thumb drives of data, which included material hacked from the Executive Office of the President, the State Department, the U.S. House of Representatives, various federal agencies, as well as some non-profit organizations, such as George Soros’ Open Society Foundation and the Atlantic Council. T1 later provided the FBI additional data, referred to in the Clinton Annex as “Post-8 data.”

Among other things, the Post-8 data included two Russian-language documents that appeared to be reports discussing purported communications between the then-chair of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and individuals working for Soros’ Open Society Foundation. An FBI linguist translated the reports into English, with the first report stating:

Recent information appearing in the media about the FBI investigating possible facts of corruption connected with the State Department and the granting of preferences to Clinton Fund donors created a negative reaction within the party, though this information was known to Democratic Party leaders since June 2015. According to Wassermann Schultz [sic], so far the FBI does not have any hard evidence against Hillary Clinton because data was removed from the mail servers just in time.

The second Russian report T1 provided to the FBI, as translated, read:

By way of forming a consensus relative to the candidacy of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, leading the Democratic Party (DP), sanctioned use of all administrative levers to remove possibly negative effects of the FBI investigation of the business of the Clinton Foundation and the email correspondence of the State Department. 

Based on information from Wassermann Schultz [sic], the FBI does not anticipate any kind of direct evidence against Clinton, as there was timely deletion from the email servers. The political director of the Hillary Clinton staff, Amanda Renteria [PH], regularly receives information from Loretta Lynch of the Department of Justice, on the plans and intentions of the FBI.

Although then-FBI Director Comey and the Midyear Exam investigative team knew of the eight flash drives and the post-8 data, the inspector general concluded that the FBI appeared to dismiss the information T1 provided “as not credible without any investigative steps actually having been taken to either corroborate or disprove the allegations.” And, notwithstanding the references in the reports to the Clinton Foundation, the FBI under both the Obama Administration and later under Trump 1.0 refused to share that information with the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas.

Equally shocking is the fact that the Obama Administration barred the FBI from comprehensively reviewing the thumb drives that contained large amounts of data from the State Department, the Executive Office of the President, and the House of Representatives, reasoning that such information “was subject to various Executive and Congressional Privileges.” 

At a minimum, though, the Obama Administration could have waived executive privilege to allow the FBI to review the data to access precisely what intel Russia had hacked from the Executive Office of the President and the Department of State, as well as to determine whether Hillary Clinton had committed a crime. The Obama Administration’s decision to prohibit the FBI from reviewing the relevant thumb drives based on executive privilege proves particularly appalling when considered in light of the Biden Administration’s decision to repeatedly waive former President Trump’s executive privilege.

Of course, the Obama Administration could not waive any congressional privilege, but here there is a different — but equally troubling — disparity in play: While the Obama Administration limited the FBI’s access to the thumb drives to purportedly protect the privileged communications of the various Congressmen whom Russia hacked, the Biden Administration approved then-Special Counsel Jack Smith affirmatively subpoenaing the toll records of more than 10 current or former Republican senators and representatives, with the express goal of discovering with whom the members of Congress were communicating. And the Biden Administration’s DOJ authorized Smith to seek the records of the senators and representatives even while acknowledging that the Speech and Debate clause prohibits such compelled disclosure.

So, not only did the Obama and Biden Administration go to great lengths to protect Hillary Clinton, they went to unconstitutional lengths to get Trump.

Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion, National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.