Hillary’s Inner Circle is Target of Five Separate FBI Investigations


Crime syndicates work to the benefit of their members until such time as the law catches up with them, or a more powerful syndicate takes over and eliminates its predecessor.  At times, their ability to evade prosecution seems infinite.  While the rewards can be great, so are the risks taken by getting involved in crime.  The question is, are the members of Hillary’s inner circle about to experience the risk of prosecution for their part in the perversion of justice that accompanies so much of what the Clintons touch?

There are five separate FBI investigations that should be keeping up some of Hillary’s close associates up at night.  As an aside, they are no doubt desperately hoping for a Hillary victory in the presidential elections so she can apply her signature brand of suppressing any possible prosecution of her supporters.

Here are Hillary’s close associates who have reason to worry that the benefits of being connected to the Clintons might be about to be wiped out as the FBI closes in on them.

Huma Abedin: secrets and access – and perjury?

Probes: Clinton emails; Clinton Foundation

Who is she: Currently vice-chair of the Clinton campaign she was has worked with Clinton for 21 years, since she was 19, as among other things, intern, ‘body woman’, chief of staff and senior adviser.

Huma Abedin is now represented by attorneys as the FBI begins the lengthy process of examining a laptop seized in the inquiry into her estranged husband’s sexting relationship with a 15-year-old.

It is the most recent  stage in the Clinton emails investigation in which the FBI has looked into whether Clinton and her staff broke strict laws on the handling of classified material while she was Secretary of State through their use of the now notorious Clintonemail.com server.

The case appeared to be closed in July when James Comey, the FBI director announced that Clinton would not be prosecuted. It was later made clear there would be no other prosecutions.

However last week’s bombshell announcement that new emails were being examined put the focus squarely on 40-year-old Abedin.

Terry McAuliffe: Clinton cash from China

Probes: Clinton Foundation; links to foreign donations

Who is he: Currently Democratic governor of Virginia. Has previously been prolific Clinton fundraiser and chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and chairman of Hillary’s failed 2008 run for the White House.

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’s Washington DC field office into whether it was used as a front for influence-peddling.

But the overlaps between him and the Foundation go further than that and into his own campaign for governor and related campaigning.

The Washington Post reported in 2015 how he and the foundation had 120 overlapping donors, who had given him, his campaign or his political action committee $13.8 million.

That political action committee then went on to fund another campaign – that of Dr Jill McCabe, whose husband Mark is currently the deputy director of the FBI. He was the assistant FBI director when Jill McCabe was running for state senator in Virginia.

The PAC controlled by McAuliffe, which had received money from Clinton Foundation donors, gave Jill McCabe more than $500,000, prompting her husband to stand back from the Clinton Foundation investigation.

Cheryl Mills: Woman at center of Clintonworld

Cut a deal: Cheryl Mills gained partial immunity from the FBI in return for opening her laptop
Probes: Clinton Foundation; Clinton emails

Who is she: Long-term Clinton lawyer who advised Bill during impeachment then Hillary over emails; Foundation director; State Department chief of staff.

Cheryl Mills is unusual among Clinton insiders; she has already cut a deal with the FBI.

She exchanged partial immunity from prosecution in return for opening her laptop to FBI review during the Clinton email investigation.

Mills was chief of staff under Clinton at the State Department and communicated extensively on the Clintonemail.com private server.

The deal with the Justice Department – headed by Attorney-General Loretta Lynch –  was hugely advantageous as it also limited the search to no later than January 31, 2015, the point at which  the server’s existence became known to a Congressional committee.

In March backups of Clinton’s emails were destroyed by a technician, a move which could have been seen as illegal destruction of evidence.

And 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.

Phillipe Reines: What does he know of emails and access?

Probes: Clinton emails; Clinton Foundation

Who is he: Hillary Clinton press secretary when she was senator; press secretary to failed 2008 presidential campaign and spokesman for Chelsea during it; Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Hillary; played Donald Trump in debate prep.

As one of her inner circle at the State Department, Phillipe 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.

John Podesta: ‘Dean’ of Clintonworld

Probes: Clinton Foundation

Who is he: Bill Clinton’s first White House deputy chief of staff and later chief of staff; founder of DC lobbying firm Podesta & Podesta, now the Podesta Group; took charge of the Clinton Foundation in 2011 ; now Hillary campaign chairman; at 67, often seen as the ‘dean’ of the Clinton political machine.

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.

At the time Clinton was Secretary of State and Doug Band, who had effectively run the foundation, wrote a memo which emerged in Podesta’s leaked emails.

In it, Band detailed the overlap between the commercial activities of Bill Clinton and the charitable fundraising of the William J. Clinton Foundation (now the Clinton Foundation) – material which is likely to be pertinent to the influence-peddling case.

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: Dined with Hillary, lobbied for Putin’s ally? 

Probe: Undeclared lobbying for foreign government

Who is he: Older brother of John Podesta, with whom he founded what is now The Podesta Group of which he is chairman; social acquaintance of the Clintons; Democratic fundraiser

The FBI and the Justice Department are investigating possible ties to alleged corruption involving the former president of Ukraine – and Podesta’s firm is one of those targeted.

Perhaps surprisingly, the investigation also lapped at the Trump campaign, as its then chairman Paul Manafort stepped down in August when it was revealed that his company was also being investigated.

The broad-based investigation is looking into whether U.S. companies and the financial system were used to enable corruption by the party of former pro-Russian Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, CNN reported.

Doug Band: Man who made Bill rich

Probe: Clinton Foundation

Who is he: Bill Clinton’s ‘body man’ in the White House; his chief aide after leaving office until 2011; CEO of Teneo Holdings.

The FBI investigation into whether the Clinton Foundation committed financial crimes or was involved in influence-peddling will inevitably focus on one man in particular: 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 emails to Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin which have emerged in lawsuits forcing publication by the State Department show how he sent messages asking for meetings for people described as ‘friend’ or ‘good friend of ours’.

Any influence-peddling or financial crimes committed by the Foundation appear to have some connection to them, if they were to exist.

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: Smashed BlackBerry with a hammer

Probes: Clinton Email; Clinton Foundation

Who is he: Staff assistant for Oval Office operations in Bill’s White House; Doug Band’s right-hand man; edited Bill’s memoir My Life; registered the notorious Clintonemail.com server; now works for Teneo with Band.

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.

He was not prosecuted under the initial inquiry but if the Huma Abedin-Anthony Weiner record leads to new evidence, such a deal would be off the table.

Anthony Weiner: Sexual sleaze

Probe: Sexting 15-year-old girl

Who is he: Former New York congressman when Clinton was senator; estranged husband of her key aide Huma Abedin; notorious serial sexter.

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 girl told DailyMail.com that Weiner spoke about rape fantasies with her. She showed messages in which he spoke about being ‘hard’ and how he ‘would bust that tight p****’.

The revelations came a month after Abedin had announced that her six-year-old marriage to him was over when he was caught sexting a woman in her 40s to whom he sent a picture of himself in bed, apparently aroused, with his son by Clinton’s chief aide sleeping by his side.

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.

While being a powerful enemy of the Clintons has its risks, being a close associate isn’t risk-free.  The only safe place appears to be one where you have nothing to do with them at all.

Source:  Daily Mail



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