FBI Director Kash Patel has uncovered explosive documents revealing how Obama administration officials ordered the shutdown of criminal investigations into Hillary Clinton’s alleged pay-to-play corruption scheme involving the Clinton Foundation during the 2016 election.
Investigative journalist John Solomon reported that Patel found a smoking-gun email. According to his report, Obama’s Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates explicitly ordered FBI agents to shut down the Clinton Foundation probe. The documents show a coordinated effort to protect Clinton while pursuing Trump with the Russia investigation.
“Shut it down!” Yates wrote as part of a detailed timeline of political obstruction that FBI agents in New York City, Little Rock, Arkansas, and Washington D.C. reported facing from their own bosses and the Obama Justice Department.
The timeline was written by a Justice Department lawyer assigned to the FBI under former Director James Comey. Patel secured the document along with several corroborating internal emails through tips from whistleblowers, according to Just the News.
FBI agents in three cities were investigating whether Hillary Clinton engaged in pay-to-play corruption while serving as Secretary of State. The Clinton Foundation solicited hundreds of millions of dollars from foreign and U.S. interests with business before her department during this time.
As early as February 2016, the Justice Department “indicated they would not be supportive of an FBI investigation” into the Clinton Foundation, according to the now-declassified timeline.
Then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe placed significant roadblocks in front of agents who believed they had evidence to justify a criminal case. In mid-February 2016, McCabe ordered that “no overt investigative steps” were allowed in the Clinton Foundation investigation “without his approval.”
McCabe had potential conflicts of interest with Hillary Clinton. His wife received campaign money from Clinton allies to run for Virginia State Senate after he attended a meeting to ask for the cash.
The FBI’s Little Rock office initiated a Full Field Investigation on January 27, 2016. The New York and Washington field offices initiated Preliminary Investigations in late January 2016. Special Counsel John Durham’s report confirmed that FBI investigations “included predication based on source reporting that identified foreign governments that had made, or offered to make, contributions to the Foundation in exchange for favorable or preferential treatment from Clinton.”
Despite this evidence, it seems agents were blocked at every turn. Four U.S. Attorneys’ offices under then-President Barack Obama were asked for help by FBI agents seeking grand juries and evidence gathering. Three of the four refused outright.
“Downstream from them, four different U.S. Attorneys’ offices under Barack Obama were asked for help by the agents. Agents need help. We need a grand jury. We need to get evidence. We want to move the case down the road. All three of those four offices told the agents: You’re on your own. We will not assist you in your pursuit of criminal charges against Hillary Clinton,” John Solomon reported.
The most damaging revelation came when Yates directly ordered federal prosecutors to “shut it down” in March 2016. Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York and Eastern District of New York said in August 2016 that they “would not support the investigation” into the Clinton Foundation with “no explanation given.”
McCabe successfully delayed the investigation past the November 2016 election before recusing himself on November 1, 2016 – just days before the vote. Inspector General Michael Horowitz noted that McCabe “did not fully comply with this recusal in a few instances related to the Clinton Foundation investigation.”
Attorney General Loretta Lynch had a controversial private meeting with former President Bill Clinton on his plane at Phoenix’s airport on June 27, 2016. Lynch later admitted to the DOJ inspector general that the meeting “went on and on” and “that it was just too long a conversation to have had.”
FBI Director James Comey cleared Hillary Clinton on July 5, 2016, saying her email practices were “extremely careless” but that “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.” Weeks later, Comey opened the Crossfire Hurricane investigation targeting Trump’s campaign in late July 2016.
The contrast in treatment was stark. While the Clinton Foundation investigation was shut down, Trump faced a sprawling Russia investigation based on the discredited Steele dossier. Special Counsel Durham later noted that “the immediate opening of Crossfire Hurricane as a full investigation contrasts with the care taken in connection with the investigation of the Clinton Foundation and other matters.”
Meanwhile, newly declassified emails from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard reveal how Obama’s intelligence officials allegedly manufactured the intelligence community assessment that claimed Russia helped Trump win the 2016 election.
The emails show Obama’s DNI James Clapper telling NSA Director Mike Rogers to support the assessment despite Rogers’ concerns about compromised tradecraft and insufficient review time.
“Understand your concern,” Clapper wrote to Rogers on December 22, 2016. “It is essential that we (CIA/NSA/FBI/ODNI) be on the same page and are all supportive of the report — in the highest tradition of ‘that’s OUR story, and we’re sticking to it.'”
Rogers had expressed concerns that his team lacked “sufficient access to the underlying intelligence and sufficient time to review that intelligence.”
“I’m concerned that, given the expedited nature of this activity, my folks aren’t fully comfortable saying that they have had enough time to review all of the intelligence to be absolutely confident in their assessments,” Rogers wrote. “I know that you agree that this is something we need to be 100% comfortable with before we present it to the President — we have one chance to get this right, and it is critical that we do so.”
“More time is not negotiable. We may have to compromise on our ‘normal’ modalities, since we must do this on such a compressed schedule. This is one project that has to be a team sport,” Clapper reportedly responded.
The intelligence assessment was later released on January 6, 2017, using the discredited Steele dossier. The Washington Post had run a story on December 9, 2016 – the same day Obama ordered the assessment – claiming “the CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi has approved the use of a strike force and grand jury to investigate whether law enforcement and intelligence abuses over the last decade constituted a criminal conspiracy to protect Democrats while targeting Trump and his supporters.
Current and former prosecutors and agents are willing to cooperate with the investigation into possible obstruction of the Clinton probes, according to officials who spoke to Just the News.
“Tonight, we’re going to tell you about the other Clinton investigation — one that was running in three separate FBI offices: New York, Washington, and Little Rock. It was a predicated criminal investigation that was examining whether Hillary Clinton ran a pay-to-play scheme that delivered favors from her perch as Secretary of State, while foreigners and others paid large sums of money to her family foundation,” Solomon explained.
“Think about this: while Donald Trump was out on the campaign trail chanting Lock her up, maybe there was a good reason to lock up Hillary Clinton — he would argue that every night — the Obama Justice Department was telling the FBI agents who also thought there might be a reason to lock up Hillary Clinton: Shut it down. Remember those words,” Solomon said.
Patel has additional emails from Obama-era officials he reportedly plans to turn over to Congress.
Take a look —
💥Shut down after shutdown to pursue investigations and charges for Hillary.
💥So much evidence to hold her accountable for crimes, but John Solomon is fearless and continuing to expose all of it. 💜 pic.twitter.com/qW7POTTkbo— Monica (@MonBreeden) August 14, 2025