The surprise tweet from a little-used FBI account came about 1 p.m. Tuesday, announcing that the agency had published on its website 129 pages of internal documents related to a years-old investigation into former president Bill Clinton’s pardon of a fugitive Democratic donor.
The seemingly random reminder of one of the darkest chapters of the Clinton presidency a week before the election drew an immediate rebuke from Hillary Clinton’s campaign – with its spokesman tweeting that the FBI’s move was “odd” and asking whether the agency planned to publish unflattering records about Republican candidate Donald Trump.
“Will FBI be posting docs on Trump’s housing discrimination in ’70s?” asked Brian Fallon.
For the second time in five days, the FBI had moved exactly to the place the nation’s chief law enforcement agency usually strives to avoid: smack in the middle of partisan fighting over a national election, just days before the vote.
The publication of the files related to the Marc Rich pardon inquiry, which an agency official said was done in response to pending public records requests, came as the Clinton campaign and Democratic lawmakers continued to fume over FBI Director James Comey’s decision with less than two weeks before the election to announce that he was effectively resuming a review of Hillary Clinton’s email practices.
Comey’s move to direct agents to suddenly review thousands of emails discovered as part of a separate inquiry into former congressman Anthony Weiner, D-New York, has led to a range of criticism of the FBI, with Democrats and some Republican lawmakers questioning whether Comey violated Justice Department policies by making a decision that risked shaking up a political campaign.
Some Democrats have also accused Comey of hypocrisy, citing reports this week that the director argued internally last month that it was too close to Election Day to publicly accuse Russia of meddling in the race. Top intelligence officials issued a rare statement implicating Russia in hacks of Democratic officials and party offices, but Clinton and have aides have gone further, alleging that Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to tilt the race in Trump’s favor.
All told, the events of the past week have dragged the FBI, a highly regarded institution whose leaders have in recent years worked to build a reputation for impartiality, into the thicket of the polarized presidential race.
“Americans now look at the FBI and see a political entity, not a nonpartisan entity – and that has huge ramifications for the FBI and for all of us,” said Matt Miller, former chief spokesman for the Justice Department and a Clinton supporter. “It sows disbelief in our system of government and is hugely toxic.”
On Tuesday, FBI investigators were starting to examine the newly discovered emails and trying to discern how they ended up on a computer owned by Weiner. As of Tuesday morning, an official said, investigators had found no sign that the computer contained “new and bigger” evidence about Clinton. But the official said the FBI was deploying “all computers, all hands on deck” to sort through the high volume of emails and that “no one knows” what the emails contain.
FBI officials did not respond to questions about the agency’s role in the campaign.
As for the release of the Rich files days before the election, FBI officials said the timing was coincidental. The FBI released a statement saying that they were published after Freedom of Information Act requests and were posted “automatically and electronically to the FBI’s public reading room in accordance with the law and established procedures.”
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