A Justice Department inquiry launched more than two years ago to mollify conservatives clamoring for more investigations of Hillary Clinton has effectively ended with no tangible results, and current and former law enforcement officials said they never expected the effort to produce much of anything.
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.
As a part of his review, Huber examined documents and conferred with federal law enforcement officials in Little Rock who were handling a meandering probe into the Clinton Foundation, people familiar with the matter said.
Current and former officials said that Huber has largely finished and found nothing worth pursuing.
The effective conclusion of his investigation, with no criminal charges or other known impacts, is likely to roil some in the GOP who had hoped the prosecutor would vindicate their long-held suspicions about a political rival.
Trump, though, has largely shifted his focus to a different federal prosecutor tapped to do a separate, special investigation: U.S. attorney in Connecticut John Durham, who Attorney General William P. Barr assigned last year to explore the origins of the FBI’s 2016 probe into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.
That FBI investigation was being supervised by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III in late 2017, when Trump and his supporters were pressuring senior law enforcement officials to appoint a second special counsel to pursue Clinton.
“Everybody is asking why the Justice Department (and FBI) isn’t looking into all of the dishonesty going on with Crooked Hillary and the Dems,” the president tweeted at the time.
Sessions did not appoint a second special counsel, but weeks later sent a letter to Huber telling him to “review” a wide array of issues related to Clinton.
They included the Clinton Foundation and Uranium One matters, along with the FBI’s handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state and alleged leaks by former FBI director James Comey.
At the time, the attorney general was facing persistent public and private criticism from Trump, who was upset over his recusal from the Russia probe.
“Your recommendations should include whether any matters not currently under investigation warrants the opening of an investigation, whether any matters currently under investigation require further resources or further investigation, and whether any matters would merit the appointment of a Special Counsel,” Sessions wrote.
Clinton and her family have been subjected to significant law enforcement and other scrutiny over the years — though the various probes have mostly delivered reputational blows, rather than legal ones.
When she ran against Trump in 2016, the FBI investigated her use of a private email server to determine whether she had mishandled classified information when she was secretary of state.
Officials ultimately determined the case should be closed without charges.
The State Department more recently concluded a multiyear probe of its own into the matter, but concluded there was no systemic or deliberate mishandling of classified information by employees.
The Clinton family foundation has separately faced investigation over the years on vague corruption allegations, though so far those probes have not produced any charges.