The Justice Department kept the Hillary Clinton family foundation investigation open to nearly the entire administration of President Donald J. Trump, with prosecutors closing the case without charge just days before he left office.
Newly released documents and interviews with former department officials show that the investigation was long over by the time FBI agents and prosecutors knew it was a dead end. The conclusion of the case, which focused on the Clinton Foundation’s dealings with foreign donors when Mrs. Clinton was Secretary of State under President Barack Obama, has not previously been reported.
Mr. Trump, who campaigned on a promise to “lock her up,” spent much of his four-year tenure pressuring the FBI and Justice Department to attack political rivals. After the president’s allies were accused of being part of a deep-state cabal working against him, FBI officials insisted that the department acknowledge in writing that there was no case to press.
The closing documents, obtained by DailyExpertNews as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, marked the end of an investigation that top prosecutors had questioned from the start. Still, it became a rallying cry for Republicans who believed the FBI would eventually find evidence of corruption and damage Mrs. Clinton’s political fortunes.
The foundation became fodder for Republicans in 2015 after conservative author Peter Schweizer published the book “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich,” an investigation into donations foreign entities made to the family organization. Mr. Schweizer is the president of the Government Accountability Institute, where Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, was founder and executive chairman.
A spokesman for the Clinton Foundation, Craig Minassian, said the organization was “subject to politically motivated allegations without any factual basis”.
Republicans seized on the allegations in Mr. Schweizer’s book, accusing Mrs. Clinton of supporting the interests of foundation donors as part of a quid pro quo.
In particular, critics focused on the foundation’s receipt of large donations in return for supporting the sale of Uranium One, a Canadian company linked to mining interests in the United States, to a Russian nuclear agency. The deal was approved by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States in 2010 when Mrs. Clinton, as Secretary of State, had a voting seat on the panel.
The research of Mr. Schweizer caught the attention of FBI agents in Washington, who in 2016 opened a preliminary investigation based solely on “unverified hearsay information” in the book, according to the final report of John H. Durham, the Trump administration’s special counsel. era that sparked an investigation into the agency’s investigation into possible ties between Mr Trump’s campaign and Russia.
The FBI in New York and Little Rock, Ark., also opened investigations based on confidential source reporting information, said Mr. Durham.
Mr. Durham also compared the handling of the Clinton Foundation investigation to the FBI’s handling of the Russia investigation. As part of his investigation, Mr. Durham interviewed Ms. Clinton last spring. “Secretary Clinton was interviewed voluntarily by Special Counsel Durham on May 11, 2022,” said David E. Kendall, her attorney. “No topic was off limits. She answered every question.”
The Justice Department did not think highly of the foundation’s investigations, which frustrated FBI agents. Raymond N. Hulser, a district attorney in charge of the Public Integrity Section at the time, told Mr. Durham that the Washington case based on the book had no prediction.
Indeed, some prosecutors at the time believed that the book had been discredited.
The investigation became a source of friction at the FBI, as agents believed the Justice Department had interfered with their work.
That tension spilled over into public opinion and had far-reaching consequences.
Andrew G. McCabe, then deputy director of the FBI, was accused of leaking information about the case to a Wall Street Journal reporter and later lying about it to the Justice Department’s inspector general. The episode led to his firing in 2018 and a failed attempt by the department to prosecute him.
In August 2016, the three foundation cases were consolidated under the supervision of agents in New York. Agents were authorized to request subpoenas from the US law firms in Manhattan and Brooklyn, but prosecutors refused to issue them. The investigation seemed to be at a standstill.
Eventually, the FBI moved the case to Little Rock. In 2017, after prosecutors there asked for help, the Deputy Attorney General’s Office said the Justice Department would support the case.
Finally, in early 2018, prosecutors obtained a charity subpoena and the FBI assigned staff to investigate donor data. Investigators also interviewed the foundation’s former chief financial officer.
Prosecutors in Little Rock subsequently closed the case and notified the FBI’s office there in two letters in January 2021. Professional prosecutors, not FBI officials, were behind the decision.
In August 2021, the FBI received a so-called declination memo from prosecutors and deemed the case closed.
“All evidence obtained in the course of this investigation has been returned or otherwise destroyed,” the FBI said.
Joe Becker reporting contributed.
