Secret recordings of a suspect talking about alleged deals at the Clinton Foundation set off a battle between FBI agents who wanted to press a case and corruption prosecutors who dismissed the talk as hearsay from a foundation outsider, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Citing unnamed sources, the Journal reported agents thought they had enough material from informants and recordings in unrelated corruption probes to warrant a probe into the foundation that started in summer 2015 – initially based on claims in the book "Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich."
The book was written by Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Peter Schweizer, a former speechwriting consultant for President George W. Bush. Schweizer was interviewed multiple times by FBI agents, the Journal reported.
But last February, the FBI and public-corruption prosecutors became increasingly at odds over the strength of a case centering around whether Clinton Foundation contributors got favorable treatment from the State Department under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Journal reported.
The Journal reported at the end of 2015, the FBI and Justice Department had a general understanding neither would take major action on Clinton Foundation matters without meeting and discussing it first.
And at that meeting in February, prosecutors weren't impressed with the FBI presentation, the Journal reported.
"The message was, 'We’re done here,'" one source told the Journal.
Exacerbating tensions was the view by Justice that agents were either disregarding or disobeying instructions, prompting a message to "stand down," a source told the Journal.
Though the FBI felt it might be on the trail of a good case after secretly recorded conversations of a suspect in a public-corruption case talking about alleged deals with the Clintons, prosecutors saw the talk as hearsay and a weak basis to warrant aggressive tactics, especially since the person talking was not an insider at the foundation.
According to the Journal, the friction between a senior Justice Department official and the FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe on Aug. 12 was so tense at one point McCabe asked, "Are you telling me that I need to shut down a validly predicated investigation?" to which the unnamed Justice Department official replied: "Of course not."
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