The Department of Justice reportedly gave immunity to a computer expert who deleted Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s emails during its investigation into her private email server despite being ordered by Congress to keep them.
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The Justice Department did not respond to the Times’ request for comment on its report naming Combetta.
A summary of the FBI’s findings says he the individual, whom the Times says is Combetta, ‘indicated he believed he had an “oh s***’ moment and sometime between March 25-31, 2015 deleted the Clinton archive mailbox from the PRN server and used BleachBit to delete the exported.PST files he had created on the server system containing Clinton’s e-mails'”.
The Times, citing the FBI’s notes, reported that Combetta initially told the agency in February that he didn’t recall deleting the emails, but changed his story in May.
In the days after Mrs. Clinton’s staffers called Platte River Networks in March 2015, Mr. Combetta said realized that he had not followed a December 2014 order from Mrs. Clinton’s lawyers to have the emails deleted.
The DOJ also granted immunity to Bryan Pagliano, a former staffer for Clinton’s 2008 presidential bid, after he detailed setting up the former secretary of State’s server at her home in Chappaqua, N.Y., in 2009. A year ago investigative reporter Todd Shepherd reported on an invoice suggesting Combetta’s legal expenses were defrayed by the Clintons as late as September 2015. Though Combetta’s name has been redacted, law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation identified the Combetta as the specialist who received immunity and deleted Clinton’s emails to The New York Times. Fallon said all of this had already been “thoroughly examined by the F.B.I. prior to its decision to close out this case”.
“Not only did the Clinton IT staffer who set up her illicit server take action to avoid prosecution, so did the IT worker who deleted her emails while they were under a preservation order from Congress”, he added.
After the news outlet reported in 2012 that Clinton had a secret server in the basement of her NY home that contained work-related emails from the time she served as secretary of state, the House’s Benghazi committee subpoenaed the pertinent messages.
Lawmakers have also asked Platte River Networks officials and Combetta to appear at a hearing before the committee on Tuesday about how the email was setup and how exactly the messages were deleted.
Republican Congressman Trey Gowdy appeared on Fox News on Friday morning to react to the Times report.
“If the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice gave this witness transactional immunity, it is tantamount to giving the triggerman immunity in a robbery case”, Gowdy told MaCCallum.
“The revelation that a second individual was given an immunity deal in Hillary Clinton’s email scandal only underscores the need for a special prosecutor to be appointed”, senior communications adviser Jason Miller said in a statement on Trump’s website. “You don’t give immunity to the person who actually robbed the bank”, Gowdy said on Fox News.
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Meanwhile, FBI Director James Comey said he couldn’t recommend prosecuting Clinton because he couldn’t prove intent.
