FBI revolt reportedly building against Comey letting Hillary’s obvious violations of Espionage Act go unprosecuted - Thomas Lifson

by Thomas Lifson

Now, as the election approaches and after months of public silence, an internal revolt of FBI agents against the decision is starting to become public

James Comey's nightmare scenario is starting to unfold. 

The American public’s belief in the integrity of the FBI has cratered. Over half of Americans already disagreed with Director James Comey’s decision to not recommend prosecution of Hillary Clinton, after laying out a clear case against her. The FBI is extraordinarily sensitive to its public image because it relies heavily on its prestige in dealing with other law enforcement agencies, legendarily in the habit of taking charge. And the Bureau needs a continuing stream of smart, fit, energetic, well educated agents seeking careers there. The FBI asks a lot of its professionals, demanding high standards, and working them hard, shipping them around the country, and expecting the work to get done under trying conditions.

Any hint that the Bureau has been corrupted will have both immediate and long-term consequences.

Now, as the election approaches and after months of public silence, an internal revolt of FBI agents against the decision is starting to become public, as yet via anonymous sources. Malia Zimmerman and Adam Housley report for Fox News:

… one person closely involved in the year-long probe [is] telling FoxNews.com that career agents and attorneys on the case unanimously believed the Democratic presidential nominee should have been charged.
The source, who spoke to FoxNews.com on the condition of anonymity, said FBI Director James Comey’s dramatic July 5 announcement that he would not recommend to the Attorney General’s office that the former secretary of state be charged left members of the investigative team dismayed and disgusted. More than 100 FBI agents and analysts worked around the clock with six attorneys from the DOJ’s National Security Division, Counter Espionage Section, to investigate the case.
“No trial level attorney agreed, no agent working the case agreed, with the decision not to prosecute -- it was a top-down decision,” said the source, whose identity and role in the case has been verified by FoxNews.com.
A high-ranking FBI official told Fox News that while it might not have been a unanimous decision, “It was unanimous that we all wanted her [Clinton’s] security clearance yanked.”
“It is safe to say the vast majority felt she should be prosecuted,” the senior FBI official told Fox News. “We were floored while listening to the FBI briefing because Comey laid it all out, and then said ‘but we are doing nothing,’ which made no sense to us.”

These would be the staff Comey directed. There is nobody closer to the case. If it is true that they are unanimous, then politics and personal benefit are the only factors that make sense of Comey’s decision.

And according to former U.S. attorney and ace trial lawyer Joseph DiGenova, their views may become public. Daniel J. Flynn writes at The American Spectator:

“I know that inside the FBI there is a revolt,” Joseph diGenova tells The American Spectator. “There is a revolt against the director. The people inside the bureau believe the director is a dirty cop. They believe that he threw the [Hillary Clinton email] case. They do not know what he was promised in return. But the people inside the bureau who were involved in the case and who knew about the case are talking to former FBI people expressing their disgust at the conduct of the director.” (snip)
“There is a consensus among the employees that the director has lost all credibility and that he cannot lead the bureau,” diGenova explains. “They are comparing him to L. Patrick Gray, the disgraced former FBI director who threw Watergate papers into the Potomac River. The resistance to the director has made the agency incapable of action. It has been described to me as a depression within the agency unlike anything that anyone has ever seen within the bureau. The director’s public explanation for the unorthodox investigation are viewed by people in the bureau as sophomoric and embarrassing.”

Think for the moment about an agent who was part of the investigation. He or she will be interacting with other law enforcement people, as well as people in the FBI not on the case. Presumably, they share the public’s skepticism of the decision. With near certainty, we can predict that these people are being put in the position of defending their purportedly unanimous concurrence with their leader. I imagine that this would get rather embarrassing, unless they ratted out their boss as a liar. Either way, the reputation of the Bureau, and the personal self-esteem of the agents, takes a pretty big hit, one that continues as long as the historic investigation is remembered. This will be well beyond the lifespan of current agents.
It would tend to peeve me, in their shoes.

Best of all, they may be required to testify under oath, perhaps in a congressional investigation.

“The people in the bureau anticipate that there will be subpoenas for their testimony. Comey in a telephone conference with special agents in charge around the country, within the last few days, warned that if they received a phone inquiry about the investigation, or any inquiry about the investigation, they were ordered to report the call and the caller to the director’s office.”
DiGenova describes such control tactics as something out of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. Yet, it’s Hoover’s successor, L. Patrick Gray, who offers the clearest parallel to Comey. As diGenova puts it, “There is a Deep Throat.”
Agents involved in the case now fear congressional subpoenas thanks to Comey’s head-scratching handling of the case. DiGenova met this week with figures requesting attorneys for FBI officials. The former independent counsel and U.S. attorney affirms his willingness to serve in that capacity and to represent potential whistleblowers.
“These people are trained to be loyal, honest, and forthright,” diGenova points out. “What [Comey] did was force them to corrupt their oath of office. They have had enough.”

Timing, of course, is everything. We will see no congressional investigation before the election. So the only way this deep corruption of the Justice Department and its agency, the FBI, is if brave agents resign and, with the help of Super Lawyer DiGenova, bring some legal action. 

Thomas Lifson

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/10/fbi_revolt_reportedly_building_against_comey_letting_hillarys_obvious_violations_of_espionage_act_go_unprosecuted.html

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