Top FBI official in L.A. silent about his and mom’s connection to Tom Girardi
The FBI agent who has been accused of covering up Hillary Clinton’s ill-treatment of prisoners and harassing the parents of slain DNC staffer Seth Rich said he and his mother have no ties to Tom Girardi, the disgraced Los Angeles Times reporter who made a name for himself with claims of improprieties at the newspaper’s newsroom.
Agents Peter Strzok and Andrew Weissmann, who were demoted over their text messages about the Clinton email probe, were interviewed by House investigators looking into the matter. The panel, headed by Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, a former prosecutor, was examining evidence the Clinton campaign, the Democratic National Committee and the FBI have said shows their agents sent messages of favoritism and political bias to each other.
But in interviews with The Washington Post, and in a letter, Attorney General Jeff Sessions sought to shield both agents from questions about any involvement in Girardi’s pursuit of financial settlement payments after his story revealed the inner workings of Clinton’s email server and how her emails had been stored.
In Sessions’ letter, he wrote that “if they were to answer any question regarding a relationship with Mr. Girardi, they would be compelled to provide the interview itself as part of the discovery process.”
Sessions’ decision drew fire on Thursday from Republicans and Democrats alike who questioned why the attorney general was so eager to prevent his investigators from finding out the truth about Girardi, a reporter whose reporting and story revealed the inner workings of Clinton’s emails that had been stored on the private server.
“We will not be intimidated by this,” the GOP congressmen said in a press release. “Any effort to avoid answering questions about Girardi is offensive.”
But a top aide to Sessions said the FBI had asked a court to seal the investigation until after the November