Top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin has told people she is unsure how her emails could have ended up on a device she viewed as her husband’s computer, the seizure of which has reignited the Clinton email investigation, according to a person familiar with the investigation and civil litigation over the matter.And this at the Daily Beast:
The person, who would not discuss the case unless granted anonymity, said Abedin was not a regular user of the computer, and even when she agreed to turn over emails to the State Department for federal records purposes, her lawyers did not search it for materials, not believing any of her messages to be there.
... the new information that the FBI found State Department-related email on her home laptop also calls into question whether Abedin in fact turned over all of the devices she used to send and receive email while working at State.So she willfully withheld any information about Anthony Weiner's laptop, right?
On June 28, 2016, Abedin said under oath in a sworn deposition that she looked for all devices that she thought contained government work on them so the records could be given to the State Department. (These records were subsequently reviewed by the FBI.)
“How did you go about searching for what records you may have in your possession to be returned to the State Department?” Attorney Ramona Cotca for Judicial Watch asked her.
“I looked for all the devices that may have any of my State Department work on it and returned -- returned -- gave them to my attorneys for them to review for all relevant documents. And gave them devices and paper,” Abedin answered.
Cotca then asked Abedin specifically what devices she gave her attorneys.
“If memory serves me correctly, it was two laptops, a BlackBerry, and some files that I found in my apartment,” Abedin said, adding the BlackBerry was associated with her Clintonemail.com account.
Not according to Michael Isikoff, writing for Yahoo News, who cites Abedin's interview with the FBI nearly three months earlier, in which, Isikoff says, the laptop was mentioned:
A Yahoo News review of Abedin’s interview with FBI agents last April -- when the Clinton email probe was in full swing -- shows that the longtime Clinton aide hinted that there might be relevant material on her husband’s personal devices. But agents do not appear to have followed up on the clues....More from Isikoff:
There is no indication from the eight-page FBI report on the interview, however, that the agents ever pressed her on what has now turned into an explosive issue in the final days of the 2016 campaign: Did Weiner have access to any classified government documents on his laptop and iPhone...?
The fact that FBI agents failed to follow up on this shows that the original probe into the Clinton email server was “not thorough” and was “fatally flawed,” said Joseph DiGenova, a former U.S. attorney and independent counsel who has been a strong critic of Comey and the FBI probe. “The first thing they should have done was gotten a sworn affidavit about all her accounts and devices,” he said, adding that agents should have immediately attempted to obtain the devices, including Weiner’s.(Joseph diGenova is not saying this in order to defend Clinton or Abedin. He's a veteran right-wing hack, and he predicted in January that Clinton would be indicted for "numerous federal crimes." By May he was predicting that Clinton wouldn't be indicted, but only because "the fix is in on any criminal case against Hillary and her aides." In September, when FBI director James Comey was regarded as a villain on the right, diGenova called on Comey to resign.)
If Isikoff is right, Abedin was as forthcoming as she should have been. The FBI dropped the ball -- and picked it up a week and a half before the election.