A prosecutor now working on the case against former President Donald Trump has been identified as the one who “declined prosecution” of the Clinton Foundation in 2016.
“A top prosecutor on Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team discouraged the FBI from pursuing an investigation into the Clinton Foundation in 2016 due to what he viewed as negligible evidence, despite multiple Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) related to hundreds of thousands of dollars in foreign transactions,” Fox News reported Thursday.
That individual is reportedly Ray Hulser, the former chief of the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, who “downplayed” information being investigated on the Clinton Foundation, according to special counsel John Durham’s report.
In January 2016, “three different FBI field offices, the New York Field Office, the Washington Field Office, and the Little Rock Field Office, opened investigations into possible criminal activity involving the Clinton Foundation,” according to Durham’s report.
The New York and Little Rock investigations had declarations “based on source reporting that identified foreign governments that had made, or offered to make, contributions to the Foundation in exchange for favorable or preferential treatment from Clinton.”
Durham’s report noted that there was a need to hold meetings to coordinate the information since three separate offices had launched investigations. At one of those meetings, on Feb. 1, 2016, Hulser- who was Public Integrity Section chief at the time – was present and interviewed by Durham.
Hulser reportedly told the special counsel that the FBI briefing on the Clinton Foundation was “poorly presented and that there was insufficient predication for at least one of the investigations due to its reliance on allegations contained in a book.”
According to the report, “Hulser downplayed information provided by the New York Field Office CHS [confidential human source] and recalled that the amount involved in the financial reporting was ‘de minimis.”
But Durham’s team went ahead with reviewing the financial reporting to “understand the allegations.”
“The Durham report does not explicitly state the words ‘Suspicious Activity Report’; however, the activity described is that which would normally be the subject of such reports,” Fox News noted. “A source familiar with the matter, however, told Fox News Digital that there were multiple SARs filed related to the Clinton Foundation during that time. In 2012, Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state.”
Hulser reportedly “declined prosecution” of the Clinton Foundation on behalf of the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section in that February 2016 meeting, according to the report.
“In interviewing another individual present for the meeting, Durham learned that the Justice Department’s reaction to the Clinton Foundation briefing was hostile,'” according to Fox News.
A few months later, in May 2016, then-FBI Director James Comey reportedly directed the FBI’s New York Field Office to “cease and desist” the probe into the Clinton Foundation because of “some undisclosed counterintelligence concern.”
Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy told Fox News Digital that there are “mega indications that the Obama Justice Department slow-walked and discouraged the Clinton Foundation investigation, including discouraging the FBI from pursuing it.”
The Fox News contributor added that “it has been obvious from the beginning that the decision by the Biden Justice Department to appoint a special counsel was utterly political and done to create distance between the attorney general and the president from the decision to bring charges against Trump, that Smith has conducted it throughout with an eye on the election calendar.”
“Nobody should be surprised if people on Smith’s staff have been involved in situations that make it politically conflicting for them to be involved in this,” McCarthy said.
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