What next for Hillary investigation?

Hillary Clinton

NEW YORK – Since FBI Director James Comey closed the reopened criminal investigation in Hillary Clinton's handling of classified information two days before the election, the question remains whether or not an investigation would be resumed under the incoming Trump administration.

WND has now confirmed with the New York Police Department that in the days leading up to the presidential election on Nov. 8, the FBI terminated the NYPD investigation of Clinton’s emails on former congressman Anthony Weiner’s laptop, demanding that the laptop and all 650,000 State Department emails be taken to the FBI in Washington.

The move by the FBI in D.C. to shut down the NYPD investigation set the stage for Comey to declare in a letter to Congress Nov. 6 that the newly discovered emails did not change the FBI’s original conclusion not to refer criminal charges.

WND has also confirmed with the NYPD that the FBI in Washington has blocked the NYPD from making any arrests in the Weiner “sexting” case involving an underage 15-year-old girl.

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The girl told Buzzfeed News that Comey's decision "upset" her

“The last thing I wanted was to have this become political propaganda,” she said.

Consequently, there appears to be no ongoing NYPD or FBI investigation either into the State Department emails found on Weiner’s laptop or into Weiner’s allegedly criminal actions sending sexually explicit text messages via the Internet to an underage girl.

Nevertheless, Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, a member of the House Judiciary Committee has told WND he intends to continue pressing for the House Judiciary Committee to obtain copies of all 650,000 State Department emails found on Weiner’s laptop.

WND reported Nov. 7 that Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, a member of the House Judiciary Committee and the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, wrote a “preservation letter” to the Department of Justice, demanding that all of the emails on Weiner’s laptop be retained for inspection by Congress.

A congressional investigation under the incoming Trump administration could raise additional evidence against Clinton or against one of her close aides at the State Department, including Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin, that might induce a new FBI director to convene a grand jury.

A Trump administration Justice Department prosecution of a State Department official as highly placed as Mills or Abedin might go forward despite any immunity offers extended by the Obama administration if new Justice Department officials conclude they are no longer binding in light of new evidence developed after Obama leaves office.

Special prosecutor?

On Sunday, in an interview on ABC News “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani said it was a “tough question” whether or not President-elect Trump plans to follow through with his campaign promise to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton.

Giuliani hedged, shifting the ground of a possible special-prosecutor investigation to include a probe of the Clinton Foundation.

“As a lawyer, I hate to use the ‘on the one hand, but the other,’ but on the one hand, you don’t want to disrupt the nation with what might look like a vindictive prosecution, even though it might not be,” Giuliani said.

“On the other hand, you want equal justice under the law and if she has violated the law – you know, the FBI never completed the foundation investigation,” he continued. “That’s, as far as I know, that’s still an ongoing investigation. They completed the email investigation, but not the foundation investigation.”

Also last Sunday, in an interview on CBS News' “60 Minutes,” Trump replied to Lesley Stahl that he hadn't made a decision about whether to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton.

“Well, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” Trump answered. “I’m going to think about it. I feel that I want to focus on jobs, I want to focus on health care, I want to focus on the border and immigration and doing a really great immigration bill. We want to have a great immigration bill. And I want to focus on all of these other things that we’ve been talking about.”

Trump promised the next time he was on “60 Minutes” he would have a “very good and definitive answer” to that question.

Presidential pardon?

At the White House press briefing Nov. 9, Obama’s press secretary, Josh Earnest, was directly asked if President Obama had considered granting a pardon to Hillary Clinton before he leaves office Jan. 20.

Earnest refused to say directly whether or not it was under serious consideration.

“The president has offered clemency to a substantial number of Americans who were previously serving time in federal prisons, and we didn’t talk in advance about the president’s plans to offer clemency to any of those individuals,” Earnest responded. “And it's because we don't talk about the president’s thinking, particularly with respect to any specific cases that may apply to pardons or commutations.”

Earnest also expressed hope that President-elect Trump would not pursue prosecuting Clinton after he takes office, noting that the tone of Trump’s remarks on Election Night appeared conciliatory toward Clinton.

“We have a long tradition in this country of not – of people in power not using the criminal justice system to exact political revenge. In fact, we go to great lengths to insulate our criminal justice system from partisan politics,” Earnest said. “And that commitment has served our country very well for more than two centuries, and the president is hopeful that it will continue.”