A classified addendum to a Justice Department oversight report, released Monday by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), revealed that the FBI failed to investigate a thumb drive containing crucial information as it abruptly halted its investigation into former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s private email server.

The details are part of classified documents attached to a 2018 report by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz. Grassley stated that he and Sen. Ron Johnson had been requesting the declassification of this material since 2020.

“This shows the FBI’s extreme lack of effort and diligence in its investigation into then-Secretary Clinton’s email usage and her mishandling of highly classified information,” Grassley said.

In July 2016, then-FBI Director James Comey abruptly announced he was ending the probe into Clinton, around the same time the FBI officially opened its investigation into alleged Russian collusion with then-candidate Donald Trump to influence the election, known as "Crossfire Hurricane." 

“Under Comey’s leadership, the FBI failed to do its basic investigative work and left major evidence on the cutting room floor. Comey FBI’s careless approach to the Clinton investigation and deliberate lack of effort stands in stark contrast to the full-blown investigation into the Trump-Russia collusion hoax based on the unverified and now discredited Steele dossier. Comey’s decision-making process smells of political contamination,” Grassley said. 

In a press release, Grassley stated that the FBI obtained an intelligence report discussing communications between Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Florida), the then-chairwoman of the Democratic National Convention, and “two other individuals who had worked for the Soros Open Society Foundations.”

The intelligence report claims that the Obama administration worked to obstruct the investigation into candidate Clinton and protect her. The addendum to the Justice Department oversight report shows that Comey, then-Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe, and then-FBI agent Peter Strzok, among others, “did not make a serious investigative effort to determine the veracity of the intelligence report.”

Specifically, Grassley stated that “the FBI had obtained a thumb drive from a confidential informant during the Clinton investigation,” but Comey, McCabe, Strzok, and others “did not conduct a further, more intensive search of the drive, despite it containing information relevant to the investigation.”

He stated that the “USB memory stick contained very sensitive information that had been leaked from U.S. government agencies, including the State Department, emails from then-President Barack Obama, and potentially congressional information.” However, “the USB memory stick was not reviewed as part of the Clinton investigation, contrary to the recommendations of a draft FBI memo,” and “according to the DOJ Inspector General report, the drive should have been immediately reviewed for foreign intelligence collection purposes, but it was not,” Grassley added.

The DOJ oversight body stated that “this draft memo explicitly stated that review of the USB memory stick was necessary for a ‘thorough and complete investigation’ and ‘national security risk assessment’ related to then-Secretary Clinton’s personal server use. However, the FBI did not finalize this memo or submit this request to the public.”

In 2016, Strzok exchanged multiple texts opposing Trump with former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, with whom he was having an affair. 

Inspector General Horowitz wrote that he “could not be confident that Strzok’s decision to prioritize the Russia investigation over acting on investigative leads related to the Mifsud investigation, which were discovered on the Winer laptop, was not tainted by bias.” 

NNP, Chief Reporter Sung Ku Hong, info@newsandpost.com