by WorldTribune Staff, November 1, 2016
If Hillary Clinton were to win the White House, a number of serious investigations involving U.S. national security would be ongoing.
“There are, in fact, not one but five separate FBI investigations which involve members of Clinton’s inner circle or their closest relatives,” the UK’s Daily Mail reported on Nov. 1.
The five known investigations, according to the Daily Mail report, which does not address concerns in the U.S. intelligence community about espionage and cybersecurity, include:
- Anthony Weiner, Huma Abedin’s estranged husband sexting a 15-year-old;
- The handling of classified material by Clinton and her staff on her private email server;
- Was the Clinton Foundation was used as a front for influence-peddling?
- Did Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe break laws about foreign donations?
- Did the brother Hillary’s campaign chairman John Podesta break lawas about foreign donations?
The Daily Mail added that “the FBI does not generally comment on investigations, so it is entirely possible there are more under way.”
The advisers and Clinton pals the FBI is looking at include:
Huma Abedin
Last week’s bombshell announcement that the FBI was re-opening the Clinton emails investigation “put the focus squarely on 40-year-old Abedin,” the report said.
If the search finds new evidence of breaking laws about the handling of classified material, “there is nothing to stop a prosecution of Abedin – or anyone else.
The FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation also drags her into the spotlight. Her overlapping series of roles while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State has been unmasked by emails published either as a result of lawsuits against the State Department, or hacked from John Podesta’s account.
“She was at various times Clinton’s White House deputy chief of staff; her senior adviser; a consultant for Teneo Holdings; working for the Clinton Foundation.
“The discovery of a laptop during the Anthony Weiner sexting investigation by the FBI appears at odds with testimony she gave under oath as part of a deposition in a federal case that she had passed on all relevant devices to the FBI.”
Terry McAuliffe
“McAuliffe was a board member of the Clinton Foundation from at least 2004, so he will surely be caught up in investigations conducted by the FBI into whether it was used as a front for influence-peddling.
“A second FBI investigation focuses on McAuliffe personally regarding donations of $120,000 from a Chinese man called Wang Wenliang. The FBI is investigating whether donations made were in breach of a ban on foreign governments influencing U.S. elections. Wenliang, a billionaire according to Forbes, is a member of the one-party state’s parliament – as well as a donor to the Clinton Foundation.
“When the revelation of the FBI foreign donations probe emerged, McAuliffe denied ever meeting Wenliang. Then he backtracked – saying ‘I did not deals’ – when told by his staff that there were ‘likely’ several meetings. DailyMail.com revealed footage of him going to a fundraiser also attended by Wengliang. The venue was Hillary Clinton’s Washington, D.C. home and the attendees included Huma Abedin.”
Cheryl Mills
Mills “has already cut a deal with the FBI. She exchanged partial immunity from prosecution in return for opening her laptop to the FBI review during the Clinton email investigation.
“The deal allowed for the destruction of Mills’ laptop. Heather Samuleson, another more junior aide, cut the same deal. Mills went on to sit in with Clinton on her FBI interview in early July as her attorney, an unusual arrangement given that she had previously been a focus of the investigation.
“However the renewed move by the FBI to examine the Huma Abedin emails on the Weiner laptop could set the immunity aside. If they find new emails, those could open the way for prosecution. Equally, if they examine emails already seen on her laptop and conclude that they represent a case for prosecution over the handling of classified material, that too would be unlikely to be covered by the immunity deal.”
Phillipe Reines
“Reines was one of those – he told the FBI – who Clinton turned to for help with her IT issues. He also bought her an iPad in June 2010, when the technology was new.
Clinton was to go on to claim she only had ‘one device’. Reines meanwhile used both his state.gov email and his personal gmail for government business while in office.
“Reines was also deeply involved in responding to the Benghazi committee’s demands for information about the server and the public relations response to it, WikiLeaks emails from John Podesta’s gmail have revealed.
“However the other Clinton Foundation probe could also drag in Reines. Reines was a key member of the inner circle when Clinton was Secretary of State. His official title was ‘deputy assistant undersecretary’ for strategy, effectively her most powerful public affairs adviser. That means that any knowledge he has of how the Clinton machine in the State Department interacted with the Clinton Foundation and Bill Clinton Inc machines in Manhattan would be crucial to the FBI investigation.”
John Podesta
“The leaks from John Podesta’s emails revealed by WikiLeaks have shown how he was a key player in the Clinton Foundation – at precisely the time that the focus of the FBI influence-peddling investigation is likely to be.
“Podesta’s role at Foundation lasted into 2012, so his knowledge of how it interacted with Hillary Clinton’s aides – particularly Cheryl Mills, with whom he was in frequent contact, according to the emails – would be relevant to the FBI probe.”
Tony Podesta
“The FBI and the Justice Department are investigating possible ties to alleged corruption involving the former president of Ukraine – and Podesta’s firm, the Podesta Group (formed with older brother John Podesta).
“The FBI will therefore look at whether Podesta knowingly or negligently breached laws requiring all foreign attempts to influence U.S. politics to be registered.
“Official records also show he is a ‘bundler’ for Clinton who had raised $62,000 by the end of June.”
Doug Band
“Band was at Bill Clinton’s side to the same extent as Huma Abedin was at his wife’s, starting as his ‘body man’ in the White House, putting himself through law school in the evenings, and then running Bill Clinton’s post-presidency life.
“His explosive memo detailing the project to make Bill Clinton rich which he sent to John Podesta made clear how involved he was in 2011 in the Clintons’ lives and finances.”
Justin Cooper
“Justin Cooper’s role in the Clintonemail.com secret server started at the very beginning of its operation: he registered its existence. At the time he was being paid by the Clintons as a family aide and through the Clinton Foundation.
“He told one Congressional Committee – the Oversight and Government Reform Committee – that he had no security clearance. However as the man with complete control over the server, he had unlimited access to its contents. He also destroyed devices which had been linked to the server, including a BlackBerry smashed with a hammer.”
Anthony Weiner
“The FBI probe into Anthony Weiner is unlike any of the other Clinton associates and their family members. Weiner is being investigated after DailyMail.com revealed how he had had a sexting ‘relationship’ with a 15-year-old girl who told him he was underage.
“The FBI moved on Weiner in the wake of the DailyMail.com revelations and seized all his mobile and electronic devices. It was on a laptop he had used that they found emails ‘relevant’ to the discontinued Clinton email server investigation – setting off a bomb under the presidential election. The FBI now have a fresh search warrant which will allow them to examine the material found on the laptop which had apparently been stored by Huma Abedin.”
Report: Five separate FBI security investigations are targeting the Clinton inner circle added by World Tribune on
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