It appears the Obama administration's Justice Department is closing ranks to ensure no damaging information will surface to make it more difficult for Hillary Clinton to become the next president of the United States.
Earlier this week, it was revealed that immunity deals for former Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills and ex-campaign staffer Heather Samuelson included a side arrangement that the FBI would destroy laptop computers used by the pair after the agency reviewed the devices in the scandal involving the Democratic presidential nominee's use of a private email account as secretary of state.
Also this week, federal prosecutors abruptly dropped a case against an arms dealer who had threatened to reveal potentially damaging information about Clinton's alleged role in arming Islamic militants in Libya. American arms dealer Marc Turi said last year a covert, third-party arrangement had existed in which the U.S., while Clinton was secretary of state, supplied weapons to U.S. allies Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, which in turn shipped them to Libyan rebels.
And just Thursday, according to her recently released emails, it was disclosed that in 2009 Clinton, as secretary of state, helped arrange Pentagon and State Department consulting contracts for her daughter's best friend. Although cronyism is not illegal, it does appear to violate federal ethics rules that government employees "shall act impartially and not give preferential treatment to any private organization or individual."
In the case of the laptops, the action was akin to destroying evidence since the laptops were still subject to a congressional investigation or subpoena, several Republican congressional committee chairmen told Attorney General Loretta Lynch in a letter Wednesday.
They asked why the FBI agreed to destroy the laptops, what legal authority the FBI had to destroy items subject to further investigation and if the FBI in fact destroyed the laptops or just the "evidence" from the laptops.
Also part of the side arrangement, sources told Fox News, was that the FBI search was limited to documents no later than Jan. 31, 2015, which was before the period when Clinton's use of the private email account and unsecure server became public.
A potential trial of Turi, who had been charged with selling weapons to Libyan rebels and lying on official applications, also was likely to reveal that many of the weapons destined for the rebels in an effort to overthrow dictator Moammar Gadhafi instead wound up in the hands of Islamic militants, including some in Syria.
"When this equipment landed in Libya, half went one way, and half went the other way," Turi said, emphasizing that poor oversight allowed individuals hostile to the U.S. to get arms. "The half that went the other way is the half that ended up in Syria."
Clinton, asked about the flow of weapons by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., in congressional testimony in January 2013, said, "I will see what information is available. I don't have any information on that."
However, she had expressed just such an interest in an email on April 8, 2011, before the Libyan opposition had been formally recognized.
"FYI," Clinton wrote, using her private email address. "The idea of using private security experts to arm the opposition should be considered."
A career CIA officer said in a sworn declaration on May 5, 2015, to the grand jury investigating Turi that such a program existed.
"It was then, and remains now, my opinion that the United States did participate, directly or indirectly, in the supply of weapons to the Libyan Transitional National Council," David Manners said.
This week's revelations provide further evidence of the lengths the Obama administration will go to protect its exposure, its reputation and, through Clinton, its tenuous legacy. We can't mention often enough that an administration that boasted it would be the most transparent in history is one of the least transparent in modern history, according to those - largely from left-leaning media outlets - who deal with it daily.
The immunity deals exposed this week regarding the laptops were agreed to June 10, less than a month before FBI Director James Comey said no charges would be made against Clinton or her staff.
In the dismissal of the case against the arms dealer, Turi believes he was set up to be blamed for a program that went south on the administration. One of his associates went further in an interview with Politico.
"They don't want this stuff to come out," he said, "because it will look really bad for Obama and Clinton just before the election."
Clinton and her sycophants have dismissed complaints, rearranged facts, blamed others and twisted the truth for years in order to cover her tracks. So this is nothing new. Yet we never want to believe a presidential administration would be complicit in such a thing. The Obama administration, though, despite former President Bill Clinton's recent description of Obamacare as "the craziest thing in the world," is invested in her ability to continue its policies and to cover its peccadilloes. So perhaps it's really no surprise at all.