Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley is demanding answers from the FBI, arguing that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton received “kid-glove treatment” when her private email server came under scrutiny by the bureau, especially when compared to the Mar-a-Lago raid.
Grassley wants FBI Christopher Wray to answer questions on the agency’s handling of Clinton’s investigation and the investigation of former President Donald Trump in the wake of the Mar-a-Lago raid.
“The reporting thus far draws contrasts from how the Justice Department and FBI treated Secretary Clinton’s mishandling of highly classified information,” Grassley told Wray. “Even though Secretary Clinton and her attorneys did not hand over classified records in their possession for many months, they were not subject to a raid similar to what occurred at Mar-a-Lago.”
“Based on news reports, Trump has not been provided the same treatment given to Secretary Clinton and her associates,” Grassley said. The senator also noted he had concerns in 2016 and raised them with Obama Attorney General Lorretta Lynch about Clinton and her associates “receiving kid-glove treatment.”
He brought up the infamous Wilkerson letters written by Beth Wilkerson, an attorney representing former Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills and Mills’ deputy Heather Samuelson.
The senator noted that although the letters were incorporated into the immunity agreements for the duo and laid out the precise method the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation would use to access the information stored in the email archives of the laptops belonging to the pair.
Grassley pointed out that the letters “inappropriately restricted the scope of the FBI’s investigation” and that the bureau “inexplicably agreed to destroy” the Mills and Samuelson laptops despite them being under congressional subpoena.
During Clinton’s investigation James Comey, the then-director of the FBI, said, “although we did not find clear evidence” that Clinton or her associates “intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”
The Clinton investigation statute cited “gross negligence” for destroying classified information, although allegedly stored on the laptops. According to the warrant, Trump is being investigated for a possible Espionage Act violation and possible obstruction of justice.
