The Justice Department has reached an agreement with Clinton's lawyers to block the FBI's access to emails from the Clinton Foundation, says Strzok

The Justice Department "negotiated" an agreement with Hillary Clinton's legal team that ensured that the FBI did not have access to e-mails from its private servers regarding the Clinton Foundation, said LBI. former FBI special agent Peter Strzok, during a closed session before the judiciary. Committee last summer, according to a recently published transcript.

At the end of last year, Republicans redoubled their efforts to investigate the Clinton Foundation, after tax documents revealed a drop in donations after Clinton's presidential election in 2016. The numbers fueled allegations of long date regarding possible "pay-to-play" transactions within the organization, in the midst of a Justice Department investigation covering issues relating to foundations.

Questioned by Judge Advocate General Zachary Somers, Strzok acknowledged that Clinton's Personal Personal Messaging Servers contained a mix of emails related to the Clinton Foundation, his work as Secretary of State, and to other topics.

"Did you have access to [Clinton Foundation-related] e-mails as part of the investigation? Somers asked

CANCERS OF THE CLINTON FOUNDATION ARE ADVANCED. WHAT ARE THEY GOING TO SAY?

"We were not, we did not have access," replied Strzok. "If I remember correctly, access to these emails was based on a consent negotiated between the lawyers of the Department of Justice and Clinton's lawyer."

Although the FBI finally took possession of the servers, Strzok continued, this possession was "based on the negotiation by the lawyers of the Ministry of Justice to obtain their consent".

"An important team of filters" was used at the FBI, Strzok said, to "examine the different conditions of the various consent agreements". Limitations on agent searches included date ranges, domain names, and people, Strzok said, among other categories.

The agreement was reached, said Strzok, because "according to the lawyers, we had no probable grounds to obtain a search warrant for these servers and we had planned that it would take a very long time and / or that it would be impossible to reach the goal where we could obtain a probable cause for obtaining a warrant. "

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Strzok did not specify whether the prosecutors had made any effort to obtain a search warrant, which could have spelled out exactly what the agents could and could not search.

But Strzok later said that agents had access to "all the world" information about servers when they used search terms to probe their content. He also told Somers that "we had it voluntarily", although it was not clear when he wanted to talk about all the emails on the servers, including those related to the Clinton Foundation .

The former representative of Utah, Jason Chaffetz, who chaired the House's oversight committee and the government's reform until 2017 and is now a contributor to Fox News, said that this arrangement indicated that the agents were looking for blindness.

"They had no interest in pursuing the truth."

– Jason Chaffetz, former chairman of the supervisory committee

"What's odd about this case, is that in any other situation, it's impossible that they allow the potential author to choose for himself what the FBI can see, "said Chaffetz, noting that the FBI was aware that the servers contained classified information classified parameters. "The FBI should be the one who sorts these emails – not Clinton's lawyers."

The DOJ's goal, said Chaffetz, was to "make sure they hear no harm, see no harm – they had no interest in seeking the truth." ".

Chaffetz added that DOJ's behavior, including granting immunity to Clinton's best aides at the start of the investigation, clearly indicated a double standard: "They did not go through a walked with anyone on Trump's orbit.They grabbed it.They used firearms.and agents – and just go out there and took it. "

"In any case, the Clinton Foundation is not supposed to communicate with the state department," continued Chaffetz. "The foundation – with its name on it – is not supposed to communicate with senior officials from the state department."

The Clinton Foundation did not respond to Fox News's request for comment.

Republican concerns that the DOJ, under the Obama administration, was too comfortable with the Clinton team during the 2016 presidential campaign have intensified in recent days. Earlier this week, Fox News examined an exclusive internal panel prepared by federal investigators working on the so-called "Mid-Year Review" survey in Clinton's emails. The table contained the words "NOTE: the Justice Department does not want to impose this" next to a key law on mismanagement of classified information.

The notes seemed to contradict the repeated claims of former FBI director James Comey that his team had decided that Clinton should not face criminal charges independently.

But Strzok, in his in-camera interview, denied that the DOJ exerted undue influence over the FBI and insisted that DOJ lawyers had an advisory role in working with agents.

Fox News also confirmed that the chart was a vital tip that served as a basis for the explosive interrogation of former FBI attorney by Lisa Rat, John Ratcliffe, Lisa Page last year, in Page was in agreement with Ratcliffe's description that the DOJ had told the FBI that it was not going to be grossly negligent. "

A transcript of Page's remarks was released Tuesday as part of a major document released by the Republican Representative on the Judiciary Committee of the House, the representative of Georgia, Doug Collins.

In addition, during the in-camera session, Strzok defended his case with Page, repeatedly denying that the relationship posed a security risk when challenged by GOP employees.

Strzok, who had been sacked from the office after spending months examining anti-Trump text messages between him and Page, confirmed that he was involved in an extramarital affair when he was questioned about it when he from his interview with the committee, June 27, 2018. But Strzok was Art Baker, the GOP's lawyer in charge of the investigation to the committee, also asked if this case would have made him "vulnerable to potential recruitment "by" hostile intelligence services[s]. "

"Yeah, I do not think I would characterize it that way," Strzok said. "I think it's not so much a particular action as how it could be used to coerce or induce someone to do something. I can tell you that this extramarital affair would have no power to compel me to do anything but obey the law and to conduct an honest and competent investigation. "

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Brooke Singman and Catherine Herridge of Fox News contributed to this report.