At the time, three field offices were in agreement an investigation should be launched after the FBI received notification from a bank of suspicious activity from a foreigner who had donated to the Clinton Foundation, according to the official.
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Earlier this week, the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch released 296 pages of State Department records, including 44 emails that Clinton declined to turn over to the government, revealing a cozy “pay to play” relationship between the Clinton Foundation and Clinton’s Department of State.
As a result, DOJ officials pushed back against opening a case during the meeting earlier this year.
Clinton’s presidential campaign re-iterated that Mills was working as a volunteer on the trip.
The FBI’s investigation into Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and his tie to a Clinton Foundation donor was also raised during the meeting.
On Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Lead”, CNN Special Investigations Unit Reporter Drew Griffin reported that the State Department spent seven months stonewalling the Senate Judiciary Committee why then-Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills traveled to NY on June 19, 2012, and that a source has confirmed Mills was interviewing “top-level executives” at companies that were large donors to the Clinton Foundation for a leadership position at the Clinton Foundation, that the State Department gave CNN a “vague response” to questions on whether this violated ethics rules, and that the State Department’s response “raises more questions that are just not being answered, not to CNN, but worse, says one watchdog group, not to the Republican-led Senate Judiciary Committee, which has a right to know”.
But top DOJ officials said that some of the claims were unsubstantiated and that there was insufficient evidence to open an investigation. Band was co-founder of Teneo Strategy with Bill Clinton and a top official of the Clinton Foundation, including its Clinton Global Initiative.
That’s according to CNN, which provided new details on Thursday to its report on Wednesday that the DOJ had shot down an Federal Bureau of Investigation request to investigate the Clinton Foundation.
The next morning, at the offices of a NY based executive search firm, Mills would interview two high-level business executives.
“Cheryl volunteered her personal time to a charitable organization, as she has to other charities”, said campaign spokesman Brian Fallon. “She was not paid”. “The idea that this poses a conflict of interest is absurd”.
At a Washington hearing last month that occurred as the FBI closed its investigation into the email server without recommending charges, agency director James Comey declined to say whether the Clinton Foundation was under investigation.
In a case where there’s a possible conflict of interest that’s not necessarily criminal, the inspector general can look into it and take an administrative remedy if necessary.
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There is no doubt of the connections between Clinton Foundation staffers and State Department staffers.
