Thread by @FoiaTheThings

OK. Time to go through the @JusticeOIG report. 568 pages. Let's see what we find.

https://twitter.com/JusticeOIG/status/1007324376931454981

This is the story of Mid-Year Exam (MYE), the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into Secretary Clinton's use of a personal email server while Secretary of State, and FBI's actions in investigating it.

The first ~38 pages or so are background. Action starts on Chapter 3.

First, the timeline of events taking us up to MYE's start:

March 3, 2015: NYT reveals existence of Clinton's personal email
nytimes.com/2015/03/03/us/…

March 12, 2015: Corker, Burr, Johnson send a letter to the State IG, asking them to look into whether classified information might have been mishandled freebeacon.com/wp-content/upl…

April 12, 2015: HRC announces her candidacy to become President
April 16, 2015: Secretary Kerry asks the State IG to begin a review into email records management at the State Department, which includes looking into the email practices of 5 previous SecStates

(The first version of that report was June 2015, the final version was May 2016; you can read it here if you like) smartpay.gsa.gov/sites/default/…

The State IG, with IC IG assistance, reviewed 30,490 emails, and identified 296 emails it believed were classified.

Under the Intelligence Authorization Act FY1995, executive agencies are required to advise FBI if they believe classified information may have been disclosed.

So on July 6, 2015, the IC IG formally referred the matter to the FBI.

Some other events happening around this time:
16 Jun 2015: Trump announces run
19 Jun 2015: State & IC IG make recommendations on how to handle Clinton FOIAs
21 Jun 2015: IC IG contacts FBI for help on classification review of five emails

28 Jun 2015: State OLC gets into a fight with FBI over one email marked SECRET//NOFORN
29 Jun 2015: Patrick Kennedy says State will help FBI place more agents in countries where they are currently forbidden if FBI will agree to mark the SECRET//NOFORN email down

So anyway:
July 6, FBI gets the 811(c) referral from IC IG

July 10, FBI starts "Mid-Year Exam", the sensitive counterintelligence investigation into mishandling of classified information. (the MYE name was chosen from a list of random codenames).

It was marked as a "Sensitive Investigative Matter". Here's what that means.

Here's the FBI justification for opening it, as written at the time

FBI notifies DOJ about this investigation on July 25 - via hand-delivered courier to Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. (For reference, current DAG is Rod Rosenstein, and Sally Yates later became briefly Acting Attorney General until she was fired during Travel Ban / Jan 2017)

Rough org-chart of the investigation

10 July - 23 July: FBI interviews folks at the various IGs to record everything the IG's have to say.
27 July - 27 Aug: FBI sends preservation orders for all @clintonemail.com emails and emails sent to/from Clinton at State
27 Aug: Grand Jury opens into the MYE case

So that's a rough background on how the investigation started. And the intro to the first central dispute the OIG was asked to look at; and the topic of Chapter 4:

Why did FBI disclose the fact that Clinton was being investigated?

Roughly: Because the IG referrals were made publicly. DOJ initially wanted language that neither confirmed nor denied the existence of an investigation. FBI said neither-confirm-nor-deny language would "stretch... any credibility the Department has"

Comey's plan was to not announce, but also not hide that there was an ongoing investigation, expecting that it would be inferred from--and then immediately leak--after an upcoming discussion with the House Intelligence Committee

This is an A+ joke btw

Comey later in a press briefing carefully says "matter", not "investigation"; press then immediately infers and reported his confirmation of an "investigation".

Comey forwards several of them to his Chief of Staff: "I'll leave it to you to tell DOJ I didn't say 'investigation'"

On Oct 11, Pres Obama then goes on @60Minutes says Clinton's email server was a "mistake", was “not a situation in which America’s national security was endangered” and issue had been “ginned up” because of the presidential race

This causes a lot of problems at FBI, because even the appearance of a President politically directing FBI to open or close criminal investigations into citizens would be a deeply corrosive thing to society and the basic ability of law-enforcement to do its job.

Causing further problems, Press Sec Earnest is asked "do you think HRC will be indicted?" Earnest: "doesn't appear to be headed in that direction".

DOJ tells WH (paraphrase) "Clarify this. Make clear you have no insight into our investigation. If you don't correct it, I will."

Despite deep upset at DOJ and FBI over Obama commenting on the case, he does so again in April 2016.

Thus ends Chapter 4.

Chapter 5 is about the investigative techniques of FBI's investigation.

According to OIG, FBI sent preservation orders for about 1000 email accounts at State Dept, as well as at CIA, DIA, DOD, and WH(EOP) for everything to/from *@clintonemail.com

For some reason, OIG doesn't mention FBI also sent preservation orders to NCTC, NSA, ODNI, NRC, DOE, Treasury or Secret Service, but who's keeping score?

MYE begins by reading 30,490 emails provided by Clinton's attorneys to find indicators of criminal intent, i.e.:

* classification markings
* statements that any participant knew the info was classified
* intent to circumvent FOIA or other laws
* any other improper purpose

Thereafter, MYE spent a large fraction of its work trying to find the 31,830 emails that Clinton's attorneys had not provided, saying they were "personal".

In all, FBI was able to recover just over half -- 17,448 -- of the emails Clinton's attorneys declined to provide.

30,490 emails provided by Clinton
31,830 withheld as personal
17,448 of withheld recovered by FBI

81 distinct email chains (193 total emails) determined to be at C or S, but 7 email chains at TS//NF//SAP
12 of which were withheld but recovered by FBI (at C or S)

Non-consent process used to obtain information:

56+ Grand Jury subpoenas
5x 2703(d) orders
3x search warrants

Not sure this was public before, but HRC's natsec advisor Jake Sullivan's Gmail account also had TOP SECRET//SAP info in it, and was searched via a search warrant.

We also know that APT28/FANCYBEAR/Russian intelligence--who famously compromised John Podesta's email account in 2016--also targeted Sullivan's Gmail account on at least 14 separate occasions. (via @ridT's testimony to SSCI in March last year) intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/…

OIG reminder for folks who got upset over HRC not being placed under oath in her witness interview: This is normal.

Someone hacked the email account of one of former President Clinton's aides by brute-forcing that aide's password.

These types of jokes are much less funny when you are in a room full of prosecutors and attorneys who are asking you about felony evidence destruction.

Combetta was the only person they got really close to charging. But here's why they didn't, according to Prosecutor 4

DOJ considered various options for excluding Mills from the HRC interview (on the basis that Mills was also a witness, but also acting in that interview as HRC's attorney), but couldn't do it without threatening to subpoena HRC to the Grand Jury.

By the point they had got to the HRC interview, they had all but concluded there was no prosecutable case. The interview was a formality: so long as she didn't confess or lie, the investigation was essentially done.

On Strzok's text messages and whether they could have prejudiced the investigation

OIG conclusion on whether personal biases from any of the agents or prosecutors led to pretextual or prejudicial investigative decisions in the Clinton investigation

FBI agents describe a "culture of mishandling classified information at the State Department which made the quantity of potential sources of [mishandling classified information] evidence particularly vast"

Wow. Such anti-Trump. Much text messages. So bias.

On the Clinton interview, and that FBI had begun to wrap-up the investigation before it was scheduled.

Though OIG raises three objections to the interview, which are:
(1) Strzok's text messages
(2) a different agent's text messages and
(3) Mills and Samuelson being allowed at the interview.

OK. Lol. FBI has mucho drama with DOJ over how many prosecutors there should be at the HRC interview.

"2 agents and 2 prosecutors would be ideal. 4 prosecutors would be far too many, but we might be able to cope with 3-3 as a compromise"

Unfortunately, DOJ doesn't really do compromise.

OIG mentions the "you should know... I'm.... with her" text message from Agent 1 elsewhere in the OIG report as evidence of personal bias by Agent 1. But most of the places its cited doesn't mention it's:
a) sent looooong after the investigation closed
b) on 2016 election day

The first of many no-win situations for FBI is re Mills attending the HRC interview.
A quick break-down:

1) FBI had already determined before the HRC interview that unless she confessed or lied, the investigation was essentially unprosecutable.

2) They couldn't prevent Mills attending the HRC interview without threatening to GJ-subpoena HRC.
3) GJ subponeas are not a common practice for mishandling investigations, because it requires giving the GJ into classified information, which is complicated.

4) This would also slow the process down, which would make it complete closer to the election, and would appear political
5) Nevertheless, if HRC *did* implicate herself in a crime in her interview, Mills would be a witness to that crime, and thus shouldn't attend the interview.

I think on balance, OIG gets it right here, and FBI got it wrong. It was a hard call, but given that the chance HRC would implicated herself criminally was > 0% and Mills would then be a witness, Mills shouldn't have been allowed to attend, even at the cost of those other factors

Thus ends Chapter 5.

And six hours.

And just under a third of this enormous document.

So I'll leave it there for today.