The
American Center for Law and Justice finally got some satisfaction from its numerous FOIA requests to the Department of Justice. It took a specific court order from a federal judge to release long-secret documents that might raise a few eyebrows among those who are still interested in matters pertaining to Hillary Clinton's aides and the former secretary of state's missing emails.
The ACLJ has obtained the DOJ’s infamous immunity agreements with Hillary Clinton’s top aides Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson – documents previously unreleased to the public and which include the DOJ attempting to enter an agreement not to comply with the requirements of FOIA, and which confirm it agreed to “dispose” of evidence, including Mills’ and Samuelson’s “culling laptops” which contained all of the missing emails from Hilary Clinton’s private homebrew server.
The immunity agreements signed by Mills and Samuelson are, to say the least, overly generous to their legal interests:
As we have advised you, we consider Cheryl Mills to be a witness based on the information gathered to date in this investigation. We understand that Cheryl Mills is willing to voluntarily provide the Mills Laptop to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, if the United States agrees not to use any information directly obtained from the Mills Laptop in any prosecution of Cheryl Mills for the mishandling of classified information and/or the removal or destruction of records as described below.
That might be fairly standard. But what's highly unusual is that the content of those laptops remains the private property of the aides. In other words, some of the content is immune from FOIA requests.
This became clear in a separate letter obtained by ACLJ:
The terms “custody and control” is a FOIA term of art. So, in other words, the DOJ/FBI purported or attempted to agree itself out of the requirements of FOIA, so that nothing on Mills’ or Samuelson’s culling laptops would be subject to FOIA. This agreement is particularly noteworthy given what former FBI lawyer Lisa Page
told the DOJ Office of Inspector General:
[T]hese are the State Department’s records. And if the Secretary in the first place had actually followed normal protocol, every single one of these emails, whether personal or work-related would have been in the State Department’s possession, and there would be no attorney-client discussions happening with respect to the sort of this material.
In other words, the DOJ voluntarily agreed to refuse to comply with the requirements of FOIA as to documents that were clearly within the purview of FOIA requests and had otherwise been prevented from being FOIA’d by being stored on Clinton’s private server.
Additional information uncovered by ACLJ is even more shocking:
The DOJ agreed that the FBI would “dispose” of Mills’ and Samuelson’s laptops after the search. According to the agreement:
As soon as the investigation is completed, and to the extent consistent with all FBI policies and applicable laws, including the Federal Records Act, the FBI will dispose of the Device and any printed or electronic materials resulting from your search.
In other words, after agreeing to limit its search of Mills’ laptop to (1) only a certain method of searching; (2) only for certain email-related files; and, (3) only files created within a certain time-frame, the DOJ/FBI agreed to dispose of the laptop – meaning anything else embarrassing, negative or potentially implicating on the laptop – including official State Department records – would be destroyed and never be exposed. (Emphasis mine)
You may recall former FBI Director James Comey explaining to Congress that "no reasonable prosecutor" would have brought charges against Hillary Clinton. Under this immunity agreement, it's hardly surprising that Comey would have made such a self-serving statement.
What these various FOIA revelations have shown is that the fix was in for Hillary's "exoneration" from the start. It's also clear that there was a privileged standard of justice applied to Clinton and her aides that made prosecuting her extremely difficult.
Remind me again: Just who is it that tried to steal the 2016 election?
Hey, check out this great video of NBC News finding out from President Trump what the aftermath is like since he was there
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