Hillary Clinton scandals, FBI 'politicization' date back to first lady tenure

Hillary Clinton remains embroiled in email and pay-for-play scandals from her days as secretary of state, but as first lady she also fell into questionable behavior that dogged her husband’s first term.

The scandals were known as Travelgate and Filegate, and both set off extensive investigations, resignations, charges and countercharges of lying, file-scrubbing and unethical conduct.

The early 1990s shared issues and people with 2016: Twenty years ago, there were the Clintons, of course. There was the “politicization” of the FBI, as one committee report put it. Mrs. Clinton’s staunch defender, Lanny Davis, appeared on TV blasting her critics, as he does today.

The conservative watchdog Judicial Watch sued the Clinton administration then, as it has done more recently, to compel disclosure of her State Department emails, of which more than 30,000 were destroyed — off-limits to theFBI. In the 1990s, White House files also went missing.

“FBI leadership has a long history of kowtowing to the Clintons,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “And it meant that front-line FBI agents were either boxed in, abused or hung out to dry. Nothing has changed in 20 years. If anything, the Clintons have perfected the art of intimidating federal law enforcement.”

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