DOJ Opens Investigation Into FBI Over Clinton Email (Audio)

one or not in an open forum unquote. But members of Congress in the public have complained about Director Comey publicly commenting last year about the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server, and now, in response to those complaints, the Inspector General for the FBI is looking into how Comey handled that investigation and whether others at the FBI improperly leaked information. Joining us to tay to talk about the inspector General's investigation is Nick Ackerman,

a former federal prosecutor who is a partner Dorcy and Whitney. Nick, thanks for being here. We glad to have you. I'm glad to be here. Why don't we start out by talking about what the Inspector General of the FBI is actually empowered to investigate. He's empowered to investigate improprieties by employees of the Department of Justice, which would include Director Comey.

Uh and he pretty much has a wide ranging um jurisdiction to really look at everything that might be either un ethical, improper, or illegal that would bear on the business of the Department of Justice. And how does the investigation go forward. Does he start looking at emails? Are they going to be interviews with employees? Is he going to interview comey, all of those things. I mean, the proper way to do an investigation will be to start at the bottom, looking at the emails, invest talking to

other employees. In fact, I think one area you didn't mention were people outside of the Department of Justice, for example, that clearly should be looking at what was leaked to the Trump campaign. Rudy Julianni at some point said that he was talking to an active FBI agent. He later retracted that, Um, it's clear he was at least talking to retired agents who were talking to active FBI agents.

So all of those people, if you're doing a thorough, comprehensive investigation, all of those people, all the emails that communicated between and among those people, all of those should be properly looked at. Well, Nick, you know, if you're if you're gonna talk about a thorough investigation, you know we're talking. We've been talking a bit about the procedures involved.

Let's talk about the substance. Based on what the Inspector General has said and what we know has happened over the last year, let's say, or two years in this investigation, what is it that we can expect the Inspector General is actually going to be investigating here. I think he's going to be investigating Director Comey's actions and doing what he did, which was unprecedented and against all of the rules of the FBI. I mean, just to give you a little bit of background, Uh, the FBI is that

arm of the Department of Justice that investigates cases. The FBI does not announce indictments, It does not announce investigations. I mean, the only truthful statement that Director call Me has made is yeah, he cannot comment on investigations, so that that you have to look at it in that context. As to what happened here, it's clear that he went beyond what he was well beyond what he was supposed

to do as director of the FBI. He's simply supposed to take those investigative facts and turn them over to the prosecutors in the Department of Justice, who in turn then look at those facts that the facts puts. Put it before the Grand jury if they think there's a crime, and then make a decision as to whether or not

somebody should be charged. That did not happen. Here is there wiggle room in the rules of the FBI or in the procedures because the Inspector General didn't start this investigation after Comy made the first announcement, he certainly should have, because there is no wiggle room. I have never ever seen an FBI director or agent make any statements about what is going on in an ongoing investigation. Not even

JEdgar Hoover did that. The only time you ever ever see a director of the FBI or an official in the FBI show up to make a statement about an investigation is when there's an indictment, and in that context, all they can do is track the language of the indictment that the grand jury has voted upon. What Comey did was totally improper. I was a prosecutor for some

thirteen years. I was an assistant to Special Watergate Prosecutor Cox and then Jaworski, and then was an assistant in the U. S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York. Never, at any time did any FBI agent, director assistant director ever go out and make a statement about what the status of an investigation is. And there's good reason for that. That's because you want to be able to protect people who are presumed to be innocent.

You don't make a statement until a grand jury, which is provided for in the Fifth Amendment United States Constitution, determines that there's probable cause to believe that there's a crime. Here. There was absolutely no probable cause to believe there was a crime. Even Director Comy had to say so much, but then to go on and speculate as to whether or not there was a classified information, speculate as to the fact that he thought that Secretary Clinton had been

careless in some way. All of this was totally improper. It's purely his opinion and has absolutely no business being said by the Director of the FBI, or even the

Attorney General for that matter. We are talking with former federal prosecutor Nick Ackerman, who's a partner at Dorsey and Whitney, about the Inspector General of the FBI announcing that he's going to open an investigation into Director Comy's handling of the Hillary Clinton private email server investigation and also look at a host of other things that happened at the FBI, including whether people improperly disclosed information, uh, not just to

um the press or to the Trump campaign, but also to the Clinton campaign. And it seems to be a fairly wide ranging investigation. Nick. You know, at the time that director called me testified before Congress, everybody knew that this investigation was going on. It wasn't a secret. I know, people knew about it, and he kind of had, you know, it was subpoena to go in. He had to go in and tell tell the Senate about what it was that he invested, you know, what had happened, at least

what his conclusion was. Well, let me let me stop you right there, because he did not have to tell the Senate what his investigation did. He did not have to tell the Senate what his conclusions were. He should have said the same thing that you started out this broadcast with, that is that he cannot properly comment on the status, scope, or results of any investigation by any FBI agent. Well, let me let me ask you about

another part of it. Though. The at the time that the right before the election, and this is one of the more controversial things that happened right before the election. Director Comey sent a letter to the to Congress saying that there had been some emails found on Anthony. It turns out Anthony Weiner's laptop, who's married to him, abbott in an aide to Hillary Clinton, which might have been

relevant to the investigation. UM many have speculated the reason he did that at that time was because there was gone some FBI agents were gonna leak this information. Might Might it be if he was really trying to get ahead of a leak? Might that be a mitigating factor in in why he did it? Absolutely not. If he thought there was going to be a leak, as the director of the FBI, he should have taken the bull bother horns and immediately investigated who it was that was

leaking this who was spreading it out. The way to deal with a leak is not to take the same information and spread it out to the entire world. Look, his motivation, we don't really know what it was, but it's one of two things. Either the guy has got terrible judgment, had no idea of what the consequences were of what he was doing, or he was trying to help the Trump campaign. I mean there's just two possibilities here. I don't know what it is, but there's only two.

He has had a sterling reputation as as far as being FBI director and in prior years for all that he's done. And we've seen a lot of action by the Justice Department lately, a lot of indictments coming down. There's all different things going on, as if you're they're trying to push things through before the end of the Obama administration. And now we see this is the timing suspect.

The timing of this investigation. Well, the part with the probably problem I have with the timing is this should have been done in July when he had that press conference where first of all, he basically grabbed the scene when it should have been done not by the Attorney General, who was conflicted out at that point because of the meeting with Bill Clinton, but it could have been done and should have been done by the Deputy Attorney General

or the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Criminal Division. So if I were default anything on the timing, it's just it he waited too late. This should have been done immediately after that press conference. Perhaps perhaps Loretta Lynch is meeting with President Clinton got things off to a bad start for them and they had to pull themselves out of it, and that might be the reason why it didn't get investigated earlier. I have no idea, that's

pure speculation. But what we do know is that it was totally improper, It was totally out of school, and it should have been investigated at that point. In fact, if it had been investigated at that point, Hillary Clinton might be president today. Well, our thanks to Nick Ackerman of Dorcy and Whitney Farmer, federal Prosecutor, for being here today in Bloomberg a Low to talk with us about the FBI Inspector General investigating the FBI's handling of the

Hillary Clinton email scandal. Thank you for having me