Highlights deeply political nature of Smith’s prosecutions against Joe Biden’s main political opposition ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
A top prosecutor now on special counsel Jack Smith’s team discouraged the FBI from opening an investigation into the Clinton Foundation in 2016 citing “negligible evidence” despite the existence of “multiple” Suspicious Activity Reports related to “hundreds of thousands of dollars in foreign transactions,” Fox News reported.
Ray Hulser, the former chief of the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section (PIN) serves on Smith’s team currently prosecuting former President Donald Trump.
According to Special Counsel John Durham’s report released in May 2023, Hulser is also the official who “declined prosecution” of the Clinton Foundation in 2016.
The Durham report, which investigated the government’s “Russia collusion” probe into Trump, noted that in January 2016 “three different FBI field offices, the New York Field Office, the Washington Field Office, and the Little Rock Field Office, opened investigations into possible criminal activity involving the Clinton Foundation.”
Those three investigations led to Hulser running interference for Clinton as the 2016 election was nearing.
From Fox News:
The Durham report revealed that because three different FBI field offices opened investigations related to the Clinton Foundation, there was a “perceived need to conduct coordination meetings between the field offices, FBI Headquarters, and appropriate U.S. Attorney’s offices,” as well as “components” from main Justice Department.
“These meetings likely were deemed especially important given that the investigations were occurring in an election year in which Clinton was a declared candidate for President.”
One meeting detailed in the report took place on Feb. 1, 2016. Present for that meeting were several FBI officials, as well as Criminal Division Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell and Hulser, who, at the time, was Public Integrity Section chief.
The report also said during that meeting, Hulser “declined prosecution” of the Clinton Foundation on behalf of the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section.
Durham interviewed Hulser as part of his investigation, and in his report noted Hulser claimed the FBI briefing about the Clinton Foundation was “poorly presented and that there was insufficient predication for at least one of the investigations due to its reliance on allegations contained in a book.”
During that Feb. 1, 2016 meeting, “Hulser downplayed information provided by the New York Field Office CHS [confidential human source] and recalled that the amount involved in the financial reporting was ‘de minimis,’” the report states.
Durham in his report said his team reviewed the information the FBI had on the Clinton Foundation, including presumably Suspicious Activity Reports, which showed “a narrative describing multiple funds transfers, some of which involved international bank accounts that were suspected of facilitating bribery or gratuity violations.”
“The transactions involved occurred between 2012 and 2014, and totaled hundreds of thousands of dollars,” the report stated.
This just further exposes the deeply political nature of Smith’s unhinged prosecutions against Trump ahead of the 2024 presidential election.