Criminal Wrongdoing of a Presidential Candidate? Hillary Clinton “Doubles Down” As FBI Probe Enters Final Stages
Criminal Wrongdoing of a Presidential Candidate? What are the political implications with regard to the election campaign? Will it be revealed to the broader public? (GR Editor)
After interviewing Hillary Clinton’s top aides last week, the question now becomes whether or not the FBI will interview Clinton next as the investigation enters its final stages.
In an interview today with CBS’ “Face The Nation”, Hillary said nobody had contacted her regarding an interview.
“No one has reached out to me yet, but last summer, I think last August, I made it clear I’m more than ready to talk to anybody, anytime.”
Clinton also doubled down on her claims that she did nothing wrong.
“It’s a security inquiry, I always took classified material seriously. There was never any material marked classified that was sent or received by me.”
Of course, there’s classified and then there’s “classified”, but we’ll save that for another day.
After interviewing Hillary Clinton’s top aides last week, the question now becomes whether or not the FBI will interview Clinton next as the investigation enters its final stages
As far as whether or not the FBI will eventually interview Clinton, although the FBI hasn’t said Hillary is the target of the probe, many experts are saying that’s how they see the situation unfolding.
“This certainly sends the signal that they are nearing an end to their investigation. Typically, the way we structured investigations when I was a federal prosecutor is that we would seek to interview the target last. As you begin to interview people who are extremely close to the target of an investigation, people who are considered confidants, you typically interview those people towards the final stages of the investigation. So that way if they tell you something that is contrary to something you’ve already learned, you can immediately challenge them on that information.” said Steven Levin, a former federal prosecutor.
“It’s very high-stakes. They’re only going to ask her questions that they know the answers to already.” added former U.S. attorney Matthew Whitaker.
As far as one angle that may be played if Clinton is found to have mishandled classified information, that it was not intentional, national security lawyer Bradley Moss says that’s irrelevant.
“The extent to which the person intended to remove classified documents is irrelevant. All that matters for strict legal purposes of culpability is whether the person, by virtue of their official position, came into possession of classified information and affirmatively removed the information to an unauthorized location.”
Outside of whether or not the FBI decides to interview Clinton, there are two interesting elements to the case that we’re interested in learning more about.
The first, what comes of the capture and extradition to the United States of notorious hacker Guccifer,who claimed he gained access to Clinton’s “completely unsecured” server. Will the FBI interview him and gather information from the hacker (who since he’s already arrested for hacking other officials, doesn’t have anything to lose by disclosing evidence of the Clinton hack). And finally, what information has been provided by Bryan Pagliano, the IT specialist believed to have set up and maintained Clinton’s server. Pagliano was given full immunity in exchange for his help with the investigation, and perhaps that specific event will be enough to trip up Clinton when the FBI asks one of those questions that they already know the answer to.
