The former chief of the Department of Justice’s Integrity Section (PIN), Ray Hulser, who also serves on the team currently prosecuting Donald Trump, discouraged the FBI from investigating the Clinton Foundation, according to a Fox News Digital exclusive. Hulser is a top prosecutor on Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team and was identified as the official who “declined prosecution” of the Clinton Foundation in 2016 in Special Counsel John Durham’s report.
Hulser discouraged the FBI due to what he deemed as negligible evidence, “despite multiple Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) related to hundreds of thousands of dollars in foreign transactions” reports Fox News.
The Durham report unearthed 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.”
The report reveals that the case was opened referring to an intelligence product and corroborating financial reporting that a particular commercial “industry likely engaged a federal public official in a flow of benefits scheme, namely, large monetary contributions were made to a non-profit, under both direct and indirect control of the federal public official, in exchange for favorable government action and/or influence.”
Fox News Digital reports on the history of the Durham Report and the Clinton investigations:
The investigation out of Washington was opened as a “preliminary investigation, because the case agent wanted to determine if he could develop additional information to corroborate allegations in a recently-published book, ‘Clinton Cash’ by Peter Schweizer, before seeking to convert the matter to a full investigation,” the report states.
But the New York and Little Rock investigations included predication “based on source reporting that identified foreign governments that had made, or offered to make, contributions to the Foundation in exchange for favorable or preferential treatment from Clinton.”
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 the 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,” the report states, including details from those meetings.
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.
Durham interviewed Hulser as part of his investigation. Hulser told Durham that the FBI briefing on 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.”
