Memos declassified by President Trump Tuesday night before his departure from office unearth new information regarding Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Newly released memos, obtained by Just the News, show “FBI agents opened an investigation in late 2014 into a foreign power’s effort to curry influence with Hillary Clinton’s prospective presidential campaign through donations.”
However, agents were thwarted by their own bureau. “The bureau’s leadership slow-walked a surveillance warrant and instead arranged for the candidate to get a defensive briefing” reported Just the News. Memos show “FBI agents became so frustrated that they were being stonewalled from securing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant to investigate the foreign money plot that they even escalated to then-FBI Director James Comey.”
On April 14, 2015, an FBI employee expressed concern that he may be “overstepping” his chain of command by writing Comey an email expressing their concerns. “The FISA application has remained in limbo for the last four months, even though subsequent investigative activity by [redacted] provided additional probable cause for the FISA application” the email stated.
The email went on to say that the FBI field office leading the probe was “still uncertain as to why the application has not been sent to DOJ for final approval although several reasons have been put forth by CD [criminal division], most recently that the decision to put the application on hold originated ‘on the seventh floor.”
The seventh floor of the FBI headquarters refers to the location of offices for the FBI director and his team. Comey responded, “Don’t know anything about this but will get smarter.” Memos did not offer any evidence that a FISA warrant was ever approved. “Instead, they show that FBI leadership ultimately decided to give Clinton’s team a defensive briefing in October 2015 as her presidential campaign geared up.”
Nothing more was done than simply telling the Clinton lawyers that “the campaign should increase its vigilance of contributions related to any of the matters discussed above” and that “the FBI was providing them with this briefing for awareness and so Ms. Clinton could take appropriate action to protect herself.”