OBAMA POLITICIZED EVERY FEDERAL DEPARTMENT INCLUDING THE DOJ

Gee, I’m Starting to Think the Obama DOJ Just Might Be Politicized

by ANDREW C. MCCARTHY January 14, 2017 4:00 AM - National Review

They took extraordinary measures in a shaky case involving Trump but refused to help FBI investigations involving Hillary and the DNC.

In the heat of the fall campaign, the commentariat got its knickers twisted over Donald Trump’s vow that, if elected, he’d have his Justice Department appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton, his political rival. 

How remarkable, then, that the media is so indifferent to the revelation that, at the very same time, the Obama Justice Department was actively conducting an investigation of Trump. 

As I recounted in Wednesday’s column, the FBI reportedly had suspicions that Trump, or at least members of his “team,” might be violating financial and banking laws. Upon poking around, the Bureau determined there was no “nefarious purpose” in the connection of a server in Trump Tower to at least one bank. 

Yet the case was not dropped upon the finding of no criminality. Instead, apparently because the bank or banks involved were Russian, the matter was pursued as a national-security investigation under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). 

Indeed, the investigation may well be ongoing. Reporting indicates that surveillance warrants were sought from the FISA court in June and October 2016. The first one is said to have “named” Trump himself (we don’t know if that means the government was targeting Trump for surveillance, or if his name was merely mentioned in the FISA application). 

That application was apparently so lacking that the FISA court refused to authorize it, even though that court is generally quite accommodating of government requests to conduct secret searches and eavesdropping. The court is reported to have granted a narrower application in October — one that appears not to have named Trump. The court’s proceedings are secret, so this reporting cannot be confirmed. 

I want to draw attention to a fact I did not dwell on in Wednesday’s column: The FBI is not authorized to seek a national-security surveillance warrant from the FISA court — just as it is not authorized to seek such a warrant from a U.S. district court in an ordinary criminal case. Only the Justice Department is permitted to do that. 

The FBI could not have sought FISA warrants against Trump without the Obama Justice Department’s approval and assistance. Interesting contrast, isn’t it? Throughout the criminal investigations of Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified information, the Obama Justice Department would not use the grand jury or help the FBI obtain search or surveillance warrants. 

As a result, the FBI had no power to compel the production of evidence. Suspects had to be cajoled into cooperating. The only thing the Justice Department was willing to do was grant highly unusual immunity deals, ensuring that suspects could not be prosecuted if they disclosed incriminating evidence. 

And then there was the Clinton Foundation corruption investigation. Recall that the Bureau’s investigators, in seeking to build their case, sought access to the e-mails the FBI had managed to acquire in the Clinton e-mails caper. But access was denied by the Obama Justice Department (specifically, by the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Eastern District of New York — the office Loretta Lynch led before being elevated to attorney general). 

And now we learn that, despite what the intelligence community assures us were grave concerns about Russia’s role in hacking operations against the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, the FBI never obtained access to the physical servers and devices believed to have been hacked. 

According to FBI director James Comey’s congressional testimony this week, the FBI made repeated requests for access (presumably to the DNC and the Clinton campaign), but was rebuffed.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443845/obama-justice-department-political

My comments: Everything Obama touched has been Corrupted and Politicized--Every Department and Agency. The Trump Administration is facing a Terrible Mess.