According to the\u00a0letter<\/a>, which is based on\u00a0testimony from James Rybicki<\/strong>, Comey\u2019s Chief of Staff,\u00a0and Trisha Anderson<\/strong>, the Principal Deputy General Counsel of National Security and Cyberlaw,\u00a0Comey began drafting a statement to announce the conclusion of the Hillary investigation in April or May 2016, well before he had interviewed up to 17 key witnesses.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Meanwhile, as if that weren’t bad enough, the\u00a0Comey statement was also drafted before immunity deals were struck with Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson<\/strong>\u00a0who seemingly ran point, along with Platte River Networks, to destroy Hillary’s emails after a Congressional subpoena had been issued mandating their preservation.<\/p>\n Here is a summary from the\u00a0Grassley\/Graham letter<\/a>:<\/p>\n Transcripts reviewed by the Senate Judiciary Committee reveal that former\u00a0FBI Director James Comey began drafting an exoneration statement in the Clinton email investigation before the FBI had interviewed key witnesses.\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0Chairman Chuck Grassley and Senator Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, requested all records relating to the drafting of the statement as the committee continues to review the circumstances surrounding Comey\u2019s removal from the Bureau.<\/p>\n \u201cConclusion first, fact-gathering second\u2014that\u2019s no way to run an investigation.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>The FBI should be held to a higher standard than that, especially in a matter of such great public interest and controversy,\u201d the senators wrote in a letter today to the FBI.<\/p>\n Last fall, following allegations from Democrats in Congress, the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) began investigating whether Comey\u2019s actions in the Clinton email investigation violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits government employees from using their official position to influence an election.\u00a0 In the course of that investigation, OSC interviewed two FBI officials close to Comey: James Rybicki, Comey\u2019s Chief of Staff, and Trisha Anderson, the Principal Deputy General Counsel of National Security and Cyberlaw.\u00a0 OSC provided transcripts of those interviews at Grassley\u2019s request after it closed the investigation due to Comey\u2019s termination.<\/p>\n Both transcripts are heavily redacted without explanation. However, they indicate that Comey began drafting a statement to announce the conclusion of the Clinton email investigation in April or May of 2016, before the FBI interviewed up to 17 key witnesses\u00a0<\/strong>including former Secretary Clinton and several of her closest aides.\u00a0\u00a0The draft statement also came before the Department entered into immunity agreements with Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson where the Department agreed to a very limited review of Secretary Clinton\u2019s emails and to destroy their laptops after review.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n And here is a key excerpt from Ms. Anderson’s testimony:<\/p>\n Q:\u00a0 So moving along to the first public statement on the case or Director Comey\u2019s first statement the July 5, 2016 statement.\u00a0 When did you first learn that Director Comey was planning to make some kind of public statement about the outcome of the Clinton email investigation?<\/p>\n A:\u00a0 The idea, I\u2019m not entirely sure exactly when the idea of the public statement um first emerged.\u00a0 Um it was, I just, I can\u2019t put a precise timeframe on it um but [redaction].\u00a0 And then\u00a0I believe it was in early May of 2016 that the Director himself wrote a draft of that statement \u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n Q:\u00a0 So when you found out in early May that there was, that the Director had written a draft of what the statement might look like,\u00a0how did you learn about that?<\/strong><\/p>\n A:\u00a0\u00a0[Redacted] gave me a hard copy of it\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n Q:\u00a0 So what happened next with respect to the draft?<\/p>\n A:\u00a0 I don\u2019t know for sure um, I don\u2019t know. There were many iterations, at some point there were many iterations of the draft that circulated\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Meanwhile, as a reminder of the timing, if Comey was already drafting a statement clearing Clinton of any wrongdoing in April then it came before any of the following interviews….keep in mind that many people on this list were also granted immunity deals…apparently after Comey had already made up his mind that nothing happened.<\/p>\n 1.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 May 3, 2016 \u2013 Paul Combetta<\/strong> And here’s some more background from the letter:<\/p>\n Mr. Comey\u2019s final statement acknowledged \u201cthere is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information\u201d but nonetheless cleared Secretary Clinton because he claimed there was no intent or obstruction of justice.\u00a0Yet, evidence of destruction of emails known to be under subpoena by the House of Representatives, and subject to congressional preservation requests, was obtained in interviews around the time that Mr. Comey began drafting his exoneration statement.[8]\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0Moreover, the Justice Department entered into highly unusual immunity agreements with Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson in June 2016\u2014after Mr. Comey began drafting his exoneration statement\u2014to review Clinton email archives on their laptops.[9]<\/p>\n The immunity agreements limited the FBI\u2019s ability to review Clinton email archives from Platte River Networks that were created after June 1, 2014, and before February 1, 2015,<\/strong>and which had been sent or received from Secretary Clinton\u2019s four email addresses during her tenure as Secretary of State.[10]\u00a0\u00a0These limitations prevented the FBI from reviewing records surrounding a March 2015 conference call that Paul Combetta, an employee of Platte River Networks, had with David Kendall and Ms. Mills, the attorneys for Secretary Clinton.[11]\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0After having been initially untruthful and then receiving his own immunity agreement,\u00a0Mr. Combetta admitted in his third FBI interview, in May 2016, that after a March 2015 conference call with Secretary Clinton\u2019s attorneys, he used BleachBit to destroy any remaining copies of Clinton\u2019s emails.[12]<\/strong><\/p>\n The limitations in the immunity agreements with Ms. Mills and Ms. Samuelson also kept the FBI from looking at emails after Secretary Clinton left office\u2014the period in which communications regarding destruction or concealment of federal records would have most likely taken place.[13]\u00a0\u00a0And finally, the agreements provided that the Department would destroy any records which it retrieved that were not turned over to the investigative team and would destroy the laptops.[14]<\/strong>\u00a0 Despite public claims by the FBI that the laptops were not in fact destroyed, the purpose of that promise to destroy them has not been explained.[15]\u00a0 However, Judiciary Committee staff reviewed the immunity agreements as part of their oversight work, so there is no question that the terms of the agreement called for the Department to destroy evidence that had not been fully and completely reviewed.[16]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But, we’re sure this is just another attempt to “criminalize behavior that is normal.”<\/strong><\/p>\n Here is the\u00a0full letter<\/a>:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n![\"Comey\"](\"http:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/user230519\/imageroot\/2017\/08\/31\/Comey%202_0.JPG\")
<\/p>\n
\n2.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 May 12, 2016 \u2013 Sean Misko
\n3.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 May 17, 2016 \u2013 Unnamed CIA employee
\n4.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 May 19, 2016 \u2013 Unnamed CIA employee
\n5.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 May 24, 2016 \u2013 Heather Samuelson<\/strong>
\n6.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 May 26, 2016 – Marcel Lehel (aka Guccifer)
\n7.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 May 28, 2016 \u2013 Cheryl Mills<\/strong>
\n8.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 June 3, 2016 \u2013 Charlie Wisecarver
\n9.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 June 10, 2016 \u2013 John Bentel
\n10.\u00a0 June 15, 2016 \u2013 Lewis Lukens
\n11.\u00a0 June 21, 2016 \u2013 Justin Cooper
\n12.\u00a0 June 21, 2016 \u2013 Unnamed State Dept. Employee
\n13.\u00a0 June 21, 2016 \u2013 Bryan Pagliano<\/strong>
\n14.\u00a0 June 21, 2016 \u2013 Purcell Lee
\n15.\u00a0 June 23, 2016 \u2013 Monica Hanley
\n16.\u00a0 June 29, 2016 \u2013 Hannah Richert
\n17.\u00a0 July 2, 2016 \u2013 Hillary Clinton<\/strong><\/p>\n