And he was appointed because of pressure from within the president’s own party to go after the supposed Deep Staters.
But he is worth keeping an eye on. Those of us burdened with long memories recall reading a lot of quotes from Washington establishment types back in 1994 about how the guy named to replace independent counsel Robert Fiske was a man of utmost probity. That man was Ken Starr. At a moment of complacent forgetting, that seems maybe worth remembering.
Huber does have a solid rep. He was originally appointed by President Obama, as all the stories mentioned. However, what most stories didn’t mention is that Obama did not insist on appointing Democrats to fill U.S. attorney slots in red states, often naming Republicans just to avoid a Senate fight, especially if the state had two GOP senators (as Utah did when Obama named Huber). Most of them also didn’t mention that last year, Huber raised eyebrows by appearing at a press conference at the White House —a quite unusual move for an independent prosecutor—to tout (of all things!) aspects of Donald Trump’s immigration agenda.
Brian Fallon, erstwhile spokesman for Hillary Clinton’s campaign , tells me he’s “not overly concerned (yet)” with this development, adding that a U.S. attorney like Huber has to work with FBI agents every day, so he’s unlikely to go out of his way to antagonize the bureau. Huber does have a solid rep.
So technically, yes, there is precedent here. But there is a huge difference between those cases and this one. In those two cases, outside prosecutors were named to investigate potential wrongdoing by officials of the Bush and Obama administrations respectively. They were appointed because of political pressure from the press and the opposition party.
The headlines called it a non-event when Attorney General Jeff Sessions decided not to appoint a special counsel to look into the special counsel after all. For the people who believe that fired FBI agent Andrew McCabe is at the center (with Hillary Clinton, natch) of a vast Deep-State conspiracy to bring down Donald Trump, ...
So on the surface, Huber’s appointment is “the same” as Fitzgerald’s and the other one, in that Huber is investigating possible malfeasance within the broad executive branch. But in raw political terms, it is precisely the opposite kind of case.
In addition to an investigation into the request for a warrant to surveil Trump campaign aide Carter Page, Huber was looking into whether the DOJ ignored allegations about Clinton’s ties to the sale of U.S. uranium rights to a subsidiary of a Russian nuclear energy company. He was also reportedly investigating Clinton’s use of a personal email server and the dealings of her family’s foundation.
Specifically, the lawmakers wanted Huber to provide them with the number of witnesses he had interviewed along with their names and the number remaining to be interviewed . They also wanted to know how many Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or FISA applications as well as the number and nature of documents he reviewed.
An appointee of President Barack Obama, Huber has served as U.S. attorney in Utah since June 2015. Now retired Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, saved his job after Trump asked U.S. attorneys across the country to resign so he could appoint new ones. Huber was tight-lipped about his investigation. He refused to answer questions about it during an exchange ...
Kristin Murphy, Deseret News. SALT LAKE CITY — President Donald Trump trashed Utah U.S. Attorney John Huber, calling him a “garbage disposal unit” for ending an investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton without charges. Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions quietly tasked Huber with the investigation in 2018 after two House ...
Huber closed the investigation in January. “Undercover Huber is a great spoof, funny, but at the same time sad, because the real @JohnWHuber did absolutely NOTHING. He was a garbage disposal unit for important documents & then, tap, tap, tap, just drag it along & run out of time. A.G. Jeff Sessions was played like a drum!”.
In January 2019, the Republican ranking members of the House Government Oversight Committee and the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Huber seeking an update of his work. They also expressed disappointment that he refused to testify at a subcommittee hearing titled, “Oversight of Nonprofit Organization: A Case Study on the Clinton Foundation.”
Mark Meadows (R-NC), Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Doug Collins (R-GA) sent a letter to John Huber on January 8th 2019 demanding answers, but they never received a response.
John Huber, the U.S. attorney in Utah, was tapped in November 2017 by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to look into concerns raised by President Trump and his allies in Congress that the FBI had not fully pursued cases of possible corruption at the Clinton Foundation and during Clinton’s time as secretary of state, when the U.S. government decided not to block the sale of a company called Uranium One.
An investigation launched into Hillary Clinton in November of 2017 by John Huber, the US Attorney tapped by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions has ended without criminal charges.
John Huber's Hillary Clinton-Related Investigation Ends with No Criminal Charges and No Interviews!
Tom Fitton blasted the “DOJ non investigation” conducted by Huber.
The Deep State is not out of the woods yet because Attorney General Bill Barr appointed US Attorney from Connecticut John Durham to investigate the origins of Spygate.
Former US Attorney Joe diGenova said several months ago that the Huber investigation into the Clinton Foundation is a farce.
Huber was assigned to look at FISA applications and the electronic surveillance during the 2016 election and actions by Hillary Clinton.
Huber and the former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, should be brought before a grand jury and investigated for their actions in obstructing justice.