The FBI agent who was fired from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation team for sending anti-Donald Trump text messages conducted the interviews with two Hillary Clinton aides accused of giving false statements about what they knew of the former secretary of state’s private email server.
Neither of the Clinton associates, Cheryl Mills and Huma
Abedin, faced legal consequences for their misleading statements, which they
made in interviews last year with former FBI section chief Peter Strzok.
But another Strzok interview subject was not so lucky.
Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser,
pleaded guilty last week to lying during an interview he gave on Jan. 24 to
Strzok and another FBI agent. Circa journalist Sara Carter reported on Monday
that Strzok took part in that interview with the retired lieutenant general.
At the time, Strzok was the FBI’s top investigator on the
fledgling investigation into Russian interference in the presidential campaign.
He was appointed to supervise that effort at the end of July 2016, just weeks
after the conclusion of the Clinton email probe. CNN reported on Monday that as
the FBI’s No. 2 counterintelligence official, Strzok signed the documents that
officially opened the collusion inquiry.
The starkly different outcomes from Strzok’s interviews —
a felony charge against Flynn and a free pass to Mills and Abedin — are sure to
raise questions from Republicans about double-standards in the FBI’s two most
prominent political investigations. FBI Director Christopher Wray will likely
be pressed on the Strzok scandal on Thursday when he attends an oversight hearing
before the House Judiciary Committee.
Strzok was also a prominent part of the Clinton
investigation, so much so that he conducted all of the most significant
interviews in the case.
Along with Justice Department attorney David Laufman,
Strzok interviewed Clinton herself on July 2, 2016. The pair also interviewed
Mills, Abedin and two other Clinton aides, Jake Sullivan and Heather Samuelson.
Summaries of the interviews, known as 302s, were released
by the FBI last year.
A review of those documents conducted by The Daily Caller
shows that Mills and Abedin told Strzok and Laufman that they were not aware of
Clinton’s server until after she left the State Department.
“Mills did not learn Clinton was using a private server
until after Clinton’s [Department of State] tenure,” reads notes from Mills’
April 9, 2016 interview. “Mills stated she was not even sure she knew what a
server was at the time.”
Abedin also denied knowing about Clinton’s server until
leaving the State Department in 2013.
“Abedin did not know that Clinton had a private server
until about a year and a half ago when it became public knowledge,” the summary
of Strzok’s interview with Abedin states.
But undercutting those denials are email exchanges in
which both Mills and Abedin either directly discussed or were involved in
discussing Clinton’s server.
“hrc email coming back — is server okay?” Mills asked in
a Feb. 27, 2010 email to Abedin and Justin Cooper, a longtime aide to Bill
Clinton who helped set up the Clinton server.
“Ur funny. We are on the same server,” Cooper replied.
Mills and Abedin were also involved in an Aug. 30, 2011
exchange in which State Department official Stephen Mull mentioned that
Clinton’s “email server is down.”
And in a Jan. 9, 2011 email exchange, Cooper told Abedin
that Clinton’s server had been malfunctioning because “someone was trying to
hack us.”
“Had to shut down the server,” wrote Cooper, who told the
FBI in his interviews that he discussed Clinton’s server with Abedin in 2009,
when it was being set up.
Jan. 9, 2011 email to Huma Abedin regarding Hillary
Clinton’s server. (State Department)
Former FBI Director James Comey defended the Clinton
aides’ inconsistent statements in a House Judiciary Committee hearing held on
Sept. 28, 2016.
“Having done many investigations myself, there’s always
conflicting recollections of facts, some of which are central [to the
investigation], some of which are peripheral,” Comey told Jason Chaffetz, a
former Utah congressman who served on the committee last year.
Chaffetz was not buying Comey’s dismissive response.
“I think she lied to everybody,” he said of Mills in an
interview on Fox News the night of the Comey hearing.
“There’s direct evidence that she actually did know
[about the server],” said Chaffetz, who added that Comey’s defense of Mills
“makes no sense.”
Chaffetz suggested that Mills would have had an incentive
to deny knowing about the server during Clinton’s State Department tenure
because it would allow her to cite attorney-client privilege to avoid
discussing certain aspects of Clinton’s email setup. Mills began working as one
of Clinton’s lawyers just after they left the State Department.
Strzok’s role in the Clinton and Russia investigations
took on a new significance on Saturday after the bombshell revelation that the
FBI veteran exchanged politically-charged text messages last year.
Strzok was kicked off Mueller’s team over the summer
after the Justice Department’s inspector general discovered that he sent the
messages to Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer and his mistress. The watchdog has been
investigating the FBI and DOJ’s handling of the Clinton email matter.
Page also worked on the Mueller team for a short time
over the summer.
The DC also discovered that Strzok’s wife, a Securities
and Exchange Commission attorney named Melissa Hodgman, has a strong
pro-Clinton bias. Her Facebook account shows she’s a member of groups called
“We Voted for Hillary” and “Thank You Obama.”
It was reported back in August that Strzok had been
removed from the Mueller team to the FBI’s human resources department.
Mueller’s office had declined for months to comment on the mysterious personnel
move.
It was also revealed on Monday that Strzok was the FBI
agent responsible for softening language that Comey used in his July 5, 2016
statement closing the Clinton investigation. Strzok edited a rough draft of
Comey’s speech, changing out the phrase “grossly negligent” — a term which has
legal weight — with the softer phrase, “extremely careless.”
The FBI and Special Counsel’s Office did not respond to
requests for comment.
