Immunity with a difference

The latest news coming out of the FBI’s faux investigation of the Clinton email scandal boggles the mind. At FOX News, Catherine Herridge and Adam Shaw report that the FBI agreed to destroy the laptops of Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson as part of the immunity deals to which it agreed with them:

Immunity deals for two top Hillary Clinton aides included a side arrangement obliging the FBI to destroy their laptops after reviewing the devices, House Judiciary Committee sources told Fox News on Monday.

Sources said the arrangement with former Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills and ex-campaign staffer Heather Samuelson also limited the search to no later than Jan. 31, 2015. This meant investigators could not review documents for the period after the email server became public — in turn preventing the bureau from discovering if there was any evidence of obstruction of justice, sources said.

The Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee fired off a letter Monday to Attorney General Loretta Lynch asking why the DOJ and FBI agreed to the restrictive terms, including that the FBI would destroy the laptops after finishing the search.

“Like many things about this case, these new materials raise more questions than answers,” Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., wrote in the letter obtained by Fox News.

“Doesn’t the willingness of Ms. Mills and Ms. Samuelson to have their laptops destroyed by the FBI contradict their claim that the laptops could have been withheld because they contained non-relevant, privileged information? If so, doesn’t that undermine the claim that the side agreements were necessary?” Goodlatte asks.

The FOX News story includes the video of Herridge’s report on Special Report with Bret Baier last night; PJ Media’s Debra Heine comments briefly on this arrangement and posts the video below with Herridge discussing the story with Brit Hume.

The letters setting forth the immunity agreements have not been made public. We are left to draw our own unflattering inferences on the crimes and the coverup based on the news to date, in which the FBI and the Department of Justice appear ever more visibly as the key players.

UPDATE: See my post “Say it ain’t so, Jim,” linking to Adnrew McCarthy’s NRO column on this matter.

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