by WorldTribune Staff, August 14, 2025 Real World News
A 2017 memo uncovered by FBI Director Kash Patel details how investigators in three cities looking into possible Clinton Foundation crimes during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State were shut down by top officials in the Obama Justice Department.
The Obama DOJ, the memo shows, was intent on stopping the investigation until the 2016 election was decided. At the same time, Obama operatives were going full steam ahead on the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.
The agents investigating the Clinton Foundation had sought the help of federal prosecutors to determine whether or what crimes occurred while Hillary Clinton headed up the State Department, most notably, because at that time, the foundation solicited hundreds of millions of dollars from foreign and U.S. interests with business before her department.
“Shut it down!” then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates is quoted as telling investigators in New York City, Little Rock, Arkansas, and Washington D.C.
The timeline written by a Justice Department lawyer assigned to the FBI under then-Director James Comey was secured by top aides to Patel along with several corroborating internal emails and was obtained by Just the News.
“Together, they make clear that both the DOJ and former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe placed significant impediments in front of agents who believed they had evidence to justify a public integrity criminal case,” Just the News reported on Wednesday.
As early as February 2016, the Justice Department “indicated they would not be supportive of an FBI investigation.” In mid-February 2016, McCabe ordered that “no overt investigative steps” were allowed to be taken in the Clinton Foundation investigation “without his approval.”
The timeline detailed how Yates ordered one of the federal prosecutors to “shut it down” likely in the March 2016 timeframe. Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York (SDNY) and Eastern District of New York (EDNY) purportedly said in August 2016 that they “would not support the investigation” into the Clinton Foundation, according to the timeline, and that “no explanation was given.”
The investigators were thwarted at every step, the memo uncovered by Patel reveals.
The timeline stated that, in July or August 2015, an FBI supervisory special agent at the Washington Field Office “had a brief discussion” with a member of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia “regarding the Clinton Foundation allegations” which had been focused on by the book Clinton Cash by Peter Schweizer. At the time, an investigator whose name remains redacted “was in the process of attempting to predicate an investigation based on the allegations.”
An unnamed investigator “may have had one or two brief discussions” in the fall of 2015 with an assistant U.S. attorney in the nation’s capital and with a member of DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, according to the timeline, where the Clinton Foundation was “likely ancillary” and “with the intention of informing” the redacted DOJ officials that an investigator “was continuing to study the matter to possibly predicate an investigation.”
A meeting between multiple FBI agents and DOJ officials whose names are redacted, including staff from the Criminal Investigative Division and the Office of General Counsel, was held “to discuss the opening of the Clinton Foundation investigation.” An unnamed official whose identity was redacted “authorized all three field offices to open investigations but to not take any investigative steps until the matter was discussed with DOJ.” The FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division “advised the search/access parameters for their investigation were limited in scope” and that the Criminal Investigative Division “would not be able to share” certain redacted information “with the CF investigative team.”
The timeline stated that the FBI’s New York field office “initiated a Preliminary Investigation” on January 22, the Little Rock field office “initiated a Full Field Investigation” on January 27, and the Washington field office “initiated a Preliminary Investigation” on January 29, 2016.
Despite that evidence, the FBI timeline stated that DOJ “indicated they would not be supportive of an FBI investigation” on February 1, 2016.
The timeline said that personnel from the FBI’s Little Rock office raised concerns that a redacted official “may not want to be a party to the briefing because of conflicts of interest” during an early February 2016 meeting. A redacted Little Rock official “expressed these concerns due to the possibility that” another redacted official “was believed to be a supporter of the Democratic Party and possibly the Clintons.”
There was a meeting between officials from the New York and Washington field offices, and possibly the Little Rock field office, on February 17, 2016 according to the timeline. McCabe “led the meeting” and “was advised” by the New York field office about a confidential human source (CHS) “who possibly had information on the matter.” During this meeting, McCabe “directed that no overt investigative steps were to be taken on the CF investigation without his approval.”
The timeline stated that the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division reiterated that “all overt investigative steps related to the CF investigation” would “require” McCabe’s approval, “with the exception of speaking to open CHSs” during a February 22, 2016 meeting. The inquiry was further hobbled during the meeting when the FBI offices were “directed not to open or recruit any new CHSs, and no additional overt investigative steps were authorized.”
Special Counsel John Durham’s report said “McCabe initially directed the field offices to close their cases, but following objections, agreed to reconsider the final disposition of the cases.”
Paul Abbate, then the assistant director in charge of the Washington Field Office, described McCabe as “negative,” “annoyed,” and “angry” about the Clinton Foundation cases, with McCabe saying that “they [the DOJ] say there’s nothing here” and with McCabe asking “why are we even doing this?”
The declassified timeline showed that the FBI’s Little Rock office “sent an email” to the Criminal Investigative Division “requesting concurrence” to “obtain supporting documents” for the investigation on March 1, 2016, but the Little Rock investigators “never received permission to seek the documents.” The timeline also said that, possibly in March 2016, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Arkansas informed the FBI’s Little Rock investigators that Yates “ordered” the federal prosecutors to “shut it down.”
The timeline said the FBI field offices in Little Rock and the nation’s capital were “directed to close their investigations” while the New York office “was advised no overt investigative action was to take place” unless McCabe authorized it.
Just the News noted:
The differences in how the Justice Department and FBI handled cases related to Clinton and Trump were stark — publicly exonerating Clinton for her mishandling of classified information when using a private email server as secretary of state and not even allowing the Clinton Foundation investigation to get off the ground, while launching a sprawling and baseless Russia collusion inquiry into the Trump campaign and the candidate (and then the president) himself.
Report: As Trump-Russia hoax marched on, Obama DOJ shut down Clinton Foundation investigation added by Editor Two on
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