Throughout her historic bid for the White House, Hillary Clinton has battled accusations of fostering a “pay for play” culture at the State Department, giving undue access to major Clinton Foundation donors. So far, Republicans have largely failed to find a smoking gun, but the narrative has served its purpose: tarnishing the public perception of the Democratic nominee and her family’s namesake charity. For this, no one deserves more credit than Peter Schweizer, Breitbart editor-at-large and the author of Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich. The controversial, and mostly discredited, book has been held up by many as irrefutable proof of wrongdoing, or at least common venality, by the Clintons. It also found plenty of eager readers within the Federal Bureau of Investigation, The Wall Street Journal and New York Times report, galvanizing a number of F.B.I. agents to launch an investigation into the Clinton Foundation, based mostly on assertions made by Schweizer in the book.
On Thursday, the Journal reported that last summer, shortly after Clinton Cash was published, a number of F.B.I. agents began investigating claims made against the Clinton Foundation in the book, ultimately prompting an internal battle between the agents and F.B.I. and Justice Department officials. The agents secretly recorded conversations with two informants—both of whom were involved in separate public-corruption investigations—about the Clinton Foundation, and believed that they had enough evidence to build a case. Senior officials in the F.B.I. and the Justice Department, however, were skeptical of the evidence and the primary source, Schweizer’s book. Public-integrity prosecutors reportedly “weren’t impressed” and “thought the talk was hearsay and a weak basis to warrant aggressive tactics, like presenting evidence to a grand jury, because the person who was secretly recorded wasn’t inside the Clinton Foundation,” according to the Journal’s report.
The argument is certainly a compelling one. Even Schweizer—whom the Journal reports was interviewed on several occasions by the F.B.I. agents interested in the Clinton Foundation—has conceded that he does not have any “direct evidence” to prove that the Clintons have done anything beyond the pale. During an interview with ABC’s This Week in April 2015, the author said, “The smoking gun is the pattern of behavior,” and when pressed by host George Stephanopoulos, added, “It’s not up to an author to prove the crime.” Schweizer is also hardly without his own agenda. At Breitbart, Schweizer worked under former executive Stephen Bannon, now the campaign C.E.O. for Donald Trump. He is also the president of the Government Accountability Institute, a nonprofit organization co-founded by Bannon that seeks to build criminal cases against political figures. The institute helped publish Clinton Cash, and Bannon co-wrote and produced a film based on the book.
Despite a questionable source and orders from the Justice Department and senior F.B.I. officials to “stand down,” F.B.I. agents reportedly continued to investigate the Clinton Foundation. The Journal reports that the dispute reached a fever pitch on August 12, when a Justice Department official called the deputy director of the F.B.I., Andrew McCabe, to complain about the agents’ continued inquiry, prompting him to ask, “Are you telling me that I need to shut down a validly predicated investigation?” to which the official replied, “Of course not.” The F.B.I. agents, meanwhile, were reportedly furious that leadership seemed to be trying to rein them in. As the Times reports, senior F.B.I. officials originally agreed with the Justice Department to wait until after the election to decide how to proceed against the Clintons. Now, with F.B.I. director James Comey’s decision to publicize the investigation into Clinton’s e-mail server—and the subsequent explosion of leaks and counter-leaks emanating from the agency—the infighting and partisan politics within the bureau are open for all the world to see.