In 2016, Americans were stunned by the refusal of FBI Director James Comey for stating that he did not believe Hillary Clinton had broken any laws by using her private server to transmit official government emails only weeks before the 2016 presidential election. Clinton, you probably remember, “lost” her private emails, which she’d been storing on a personal computer server. Comey chastised her harshly in a televised speech but then said there was a unanimous decision not to recommend prosecution. Instead of referring her for criminal prosecution, Comey let her off the hook, characterizing the ruthless Hillary Clinton as being, “extremely careless” in her handling of sensitive, highly classified material.
In addition to the FBI sweeping Hillary’s crimes under the rug, there was a little secret meeting on the tarmac in Arizona between President Barack Obama’s Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton that was completely ignored by the FBI. The media, for their part, completely ignored the secret meeting between Lynch and Bill Clinton that took place only hours before the DOJ was about to release their report on Benghazi.
Conservatives cheered when President Attorney General tapped Bill Barr as the replacement for his do-nothing AG Jeff Sessions. Many believed Bill Barr would do what Sessions refused to do—get to the bottom of the coup attempt of incoming President Trump and his administration by the Obama regime and the intelligence community and finally expose the corruption behind the FBI’s cover-up of the Hillary Clinton email scandal. Sadly, under the leadership of AG Bill Barr, none of these things happened.
Now, it’s being reported that AG Barr knew about investigations into Joe Biden’s son, Hunter while he was acting Vice President, since last spring, but kept it a secret so it wouldn’t affect the outcome of the election.
The Wall Street Journal – Attorney General William Barr has known about a disparate set of investigations involving Hunter Biden’s business and financial dealings since at least this spring, a person familiar with the matter said and worked to avoid their public disclosure during the heated election campaign.
One investigation became public this week after federal investigators served a subpoena on Hunter Biden. The subpoena sought detailed financial information in connection with a criminal tax investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware, according to people familiar with the matter.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan had also been looking at Hunter Biden’s business and financial dealings, as part of a broader criminal investigation that two people familiar with the matter described as an international financial investigation that had been going on for at least a year. Hunter Biden is implicated in that investigation but was never a specific target for criminal prosecution, the people said. They declined to provide details on the substance of the probe.
The Biden transition team has declined to say when Joe Biden learned of the investigation. A statement circulated by that team on Wednesday said President-elect Biden is “proud of his son, who has fought through difficult challenges, including the vicious personal attacks of recent months, only to emerge stronger.”
While the investigations in Delaware and Manhattan proceeded, investigators tried to keep the cases out of public view by taking few visible steps in the weeks before the November election, recognizing the impact their work could have, said one of the people familiar with the matter.
Mr. Barr was aware of the investigations involving Hunter Biden before the spring, the person said, though it isn’t clear when or how he first learned of the inquiries.
Mr. Trump has fumed about Mr. Barr for a number of reasons including his acknowledgment last week that the Justice Department hadn’t found widespread evidence of election fraud that would reverse Mr. Biden’s victory.
On Thursday night, Mr. Trump tweeted his frustration about the Justice Department and the FBI’s failure to disclose the Hunter Biden investigation earlier. “Why didn’t the Fake News Media, the FBI, and the DOJ report the Biden matter BEFORE the Election,” he wrote.
Justice Department guidelines advise investigators against taking overt actions in a run-up to an election so as not to be seen as affecting the outcome.
Mr. Trump talked of involving Mr. Barr when he urged the president of Ukraine in a July 2019 phone call to announce an investigation into Joe Biden and his son. Mr. Trump said he would direct his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and Mr. Barr to contact the Ukrainian president. The Justice Department said Mr. Trump never asked Mr. Barr to contact the Ukrainians. The request ultimately led to Mr. Trump’s impeachment by the House.
Appeals from Republicans to investigate Hunter Biden stepped up in the weeks leading up to the election. After a Republican Senate investigation in September produced a report on Hunter Biden’s finances and overseas business interests, several Republican lawmakers demanded that the Justice Department investigate. Rep. Jim Jordan (R, Ohio), for example, the ranking member of the House Judiciary panel, wrote to Federal Bureau of Investigation director Christopher Wray asking what steps the FBI had taken to investigate the information in the “explosive report.”
An FBI spokeswoman said the bureau responded to the letter and declined to comment further.
- Citizen First Staff Writer
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