Lawyers, advocates blast FBI over raid of Clinton Foundation whistleblower
Deep State: A number of attorneys and advocates for whistleblowers are heaping criticism on the FBI over its November 19 raid of a registered whistleblower and onetime bureau contractor who had already provided evidence to congressional intelligence committees.
FBI agents raided the Maryland home of Dennis Nathan Cain in mid-November, a whistleblower who had documents pertaining to the Clinton Foundation and the scandalous Uranium One deal which saw 20 percent of all strategic U.S. uranium reserves transferred (sold) to Russia after obtaining a search warrant from a federal magistrate.
The raid, which was first reported by The Daily Caller, prompted Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, to fire off a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray demanding that he provide details about the raid.
Among other things, Grassley wants to know why the FBI raided Cain, whether the bureau knew he was a registered whistleblower protected by law, and whether any materials obtained were classified. Cain was awarded protected whistleblower status by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who instructed a top aide to hand-deliver Cain’s evidence to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.
Grassley gave Wray until Dec. 12 to respond.
As word of the raid has spread, lawyers and advocates for whistleblowers have expressed shock and dismay over what the FBI has done, The Daily Caller reported Thursday.
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“I really do question the need for this raid at all,” Nick Schwellenbach, the investigations director for the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog group that frequently works with whistleblowers, told TheDC. “On its face it doesn’t seem like it was necessary.”
“This isn’t how we should be treating whistleblowers who are coming forward with information about high-level wrongdoing,” he continued. “It sends the message that you will be treated as a criminal even though what you’re trying to do is expose crime or a potential crime.”
Others agreed.
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Craig Holman, who lobbies on behalf of Public Citizen, a liberal advocacy group founded by Ralph Nader, told TheDC, “Well it certainly sounds like an absolute violation of the spirit of what the whistleblower law is supposed to be all about.”
Cleta Mitchell, a conservative ethics lawyer, also found the FBI raid unsavory. She questioned whether the FBI was truthful with the federal court when agents sought a search warrant — and given what we now know about how the bureau likely mislead the FISA court to get a warrant to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page, that’s a reasonable concern.
“If they did not fully advise the court of his whistleblower status, then I would find that to be extremely troublesome,” she told TheDC. “The main question is whether or not they properly informed the court that this individual is a whistleblower and that he had gone through the procedures to receive whistleblower status.”
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“Until Mr. Cain’s attorney is able to see what the FBI or the U.S. Attorney presented to the court in order to obtain this search warrant, then we have no way of knowing and he has no way of knowing whether they fully and properly advised the court that he had whistleblower status, and whether they informed the judge that he had gone through all of the proper procedures,” she continued.
Stuart Baggish, a Texas defense attorney, said the FBI’s search of Cain’s premises could be a Fourth Amendment violation if the warrant was obtained under fraudulent or less-than-truthful circumstances.
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“If the search warrant for Mr. Cain’s property was based on an affidavit that purposely or recklessly omitted his whistleblower status … the search could be ruled unreasonable and hence a Fourth Amendment violation,” he told the news website.
While some details have yet to be reported, if the FBI’s raid of Cain’s home was not on legitimate, it will become obvious that the bureau’s corruption is much deeper than many thought. POTUS Trump’s next attorney general had better be strong enough to clean out the snakepit.
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