Do you ever get the sense that with certain investigations, primarily those targeting conservatives, the FBI has a tendency to dot every 'i', cross every 't' and pursue charges at all costs, no matter how minor, but with others (think Hillary's email scandal) even the most glaring violations of federal law seem to go unpunished?
For example, compare and contrast the Flynn charges versus how the Hillary email investigation was conducted by the Comey-led FBI. On the one hand, Flynn held perfectly legal conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States AFTER the U.S. presidential election, a common practice for presidential transition teams, yet for some inexplicable reason, probably having something to do with fears of being charged with a bogus 'Logan Act' violation in Mueller's Russian collusion witch hunt, decided to lie about them during interviews with the FBI. As a result of his lies, Flynn has now plead guilty to two counts of false statements, has been ruined financially by mounting legal bills and could end up serving jail time.
On the other hand, compare that outcome to the Hillary email scandal where there is tangible evidence and first-hand testimony that Hillary and her team knowingly violated a Congressional subpoena by deleting 33,000 emails, habitually destroyed evidence with hammers so it could never be recovered and routinely compromised American national security interests by sending "Top Secret" communications via unsecured channels...something that Comey originally defined at "gross negligence" even though he later changed his language to "extreme carelessness" to assure that Hillary could never be pursued with criminal charges. So what were the punishments for all those federal crimes? Well, rather than pursue charges against Hillary and/or various members of her staff the FBI decided to "hand out immunity deals like candy."
Now, in just the latest bit of evidence that the Justice department has been politically compromised, we learn from John Solomon of The Hill that the DOJ didn't even bother to interview a key FBI informant before filing criminal charges in the Uranium One scandal back in 2014.
While he was Maryland’s chief federal prosecutor, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s office failed to interview the undercover informant in the FBI’s Russian nuclear bribery case before it filed criminal charges in the case in 2014, officials told The Hill.
And the prosecutors did not let a grand jury hear from the paid informant before it handed up an indictment portraying him as a “victim” of the Russian corruption scheme or fully review his extensive trove of documents until months later, the officials confirmed.
The decisions backfired after prosecutors conducted more extensive debriefings of William Campbell in 2015, learning much more about the extent of his undercover activities and the transactions he engaged in while under the FBI’s direction, the officials said.
The debriefings forced prosecutors to recast their entire criminal case against former Russian uranium industry executive Vadim Mikerinn — removing the informant as a star witness and main victim for the prosecution, the officials added.
Inexplicably, even though William Campbell was tapped by the FBI to serve as an undercover informant as far back as 2006, federal prosecutors didn't bother to fully interview him until months after charges had already been filed. Moreover, the information they learned from Campbell was apparently so substantial that it resulted in prosecutors "changing the theory of the case."
Officials told The Hill that prosecutors working for Rosenstein first interviewed Campbell, the informant, after they had already filed a sealed criminal complaint against Mikerin in July 2014.
Campbell got one debriefing after the criminal charges were filed, but was never brought before the grand jury that indicted the Russian figure in November 2014 even though the informer was portrayed as “Victim One” in that indictment, the officials confirmed
When prosecutors finally interviewed Campbell more extensively in early 2015 and reviewed all of the records he had gathered for the FBI, they learned new information about the sequence of transactions he conducted while under the FBI’s supervision, as well as the extensive nature of his counterintelligence work for the U.S. government that went far beyond the Mikerin case and dated to at least 2006, the officials said.
“Based on what was learned, we decided to change the theory of the case. … A plea deal became our goal so we wouldn’t have to litigate or make an issue of some of the stuff he had done for [counterintelligence] purposes,” a source directly familiar with the case said.
Of course, as Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz notes, this type of "negligence" in a case is almost unprecedented.
Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz said it was troubling that prosecutors would ever bring a case without talking first to a person they portrayed in court as a victim, especially when that person was an FBI informant available to them.
“I’ve never heard of such a case unless the victim is dead. I’ve never heard of prosecutors making a major case and not talking to the victim before you made it, especially when he was available to them through the FBI,” Dershowitz said.
“It is negligence, and I’m sure there will be internal issues with the Justice Department and U.S. attorney for making such an obvious mistake,” he said.
Meanwhile, and to our complete shock mind you, now that various Congressional committees have taken an interest in hearing Campbell's tales, the DOJ has suddenly recalled that he was a raging alcoholic whose testimony couldn't be trusted...which does make you wonder why the FBI allowed him to work undercover for all those years and paid him $51,000 for his services???
Congress is now investigating the entire Russian nuclear bribery case after The Hill disclosed Campbell’s work, with multiple committees demanding to know whether the FBI told the Obama administration about Mikerin’s criminality before the administration made favorable decisions that rewarded Rosatom with billions of dollars in new American nuclear fuel contracts.
Justice officials began briefing congressional officials this week, starting with the Senate Judiciary Committee. After the briefings end, congressional investigators plan to interview Campbell.
After Campbell’s name and work surfaced, anonymous allegations surfaced in stories by Yahoo and Reuters suggesting the Justice Department had grave reservations about Campbell’s credibility, in part because he had three misdemeanor alcohol arrests.
Anyone who answered in the negative to the question at the beginning of this post are now kindly invited to reconsider...what a farce...