Did Sally Yates Try to Shut Down an Investigation Into the Clinton Foundation?

In the Inspector General’s report on the misdeeds of fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, there was an interesting bit of information that got scant notice from the media. Now, the mainstream media has tried its best to ignore this story altogether, because they’re embarrassed about the way they initially covered McCabe’s firing. From jump street, they tried to present this as presidential overreach – Trump sticking his hand into the Justice Department and demanding the dismissal of a man who had signed off on at least some of the Russia investigation. So when it came out that McCabe’s firing was entirely justified, they suddenly decided that it wasn’t really news and relegated it to Page A13 of the paper. They like to play it that way.

So in that environment, it’s no surprise that they failed to dig deeper into the report and come up with this tidbit – the fact that McCabe at one point was pressured by a high-ranking DOJ official in the Obama administration to walk away from the legitimate investigation into the corruption of the Clinton Foundation. Thankfully, the Washington Times picked up the pieces left ignored by the mainstream media.

From the Washington Times:

Tucked inside the inspector general’s report on former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was the story of an August 2016 phone call from a high-ranking Justice Department official who Mr. McCabe thought was trying to shut down the FBI’s investigation into the Clinton Foundation while Hillary Clinton was running for president.

The official was “very pissed off” at the FBI, the report says, and demanded to know why the FBI was still pursuing the Clinton Foundation when the Justice Department considered the case dormant.

Although the inspector general’s report did not identify the caller, former FBI and Justice Department officials said it was Matthew Axelrod, who was the principal associate deputy attorney general — the title the IG report did use.

What’s pretty remarkable is not only that the DOJ was trying to push the FBI off this case but that the command likely came from Axelrod’s boss – none other than Deputy U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates. You’ll remember that Yates became Acting AG in the opening weeks of the Trump administration before being quickly fired upon refusing to defend the president’s travel ban. Since then, she’s been an outspoken member of the #Resistance and has even played with the idea of running for president herself.

Was she trying to protect Hillary while serving in the Justice Department? We don’t know, but this is an avenue of inquiry that Attorney General Jeff Sessions needs to direct his prosecutor to look into more closely.