12 School Principals Charged with Bribery

Rather disgusting when the FBI has to investigate. The pattern perhaps begins in 2009 with spending scandals?

Official statement from the Manager of Detroit Public Schools

Feds charge 12 Detroit school principals with bribery

USAToday: DETROIT —A dozen current and former principals in the Detroit Public Schools system are facing federal bribery and fraud charges, according to court records.

The charges are expected to be announced later Tuesday by the the U.S. Attorney’s Office at a news conference. U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade will be joined by FBI and IRS officials at the news conference.

Besides the 12 principals, an administrator and a school district vendor also are among those facing charges.

The announcement comes nearly two months after ex-principal Kenyetta Wilbourn Snapp, who was hailed as a once-rising education star and turnaround specialist in Detroit Public Schools, pleaded guilty to bribery. Snapp admitted she pocketed a $58,050 bribe from a vendor and spent it on herself while working for the embattled Education Achievement Authority, a state-formed agency that was supposed to help Detroit’s most troubled schools.

Snapp, who is set to be sentenced June 1, faces up to 46 months in prison for bribery. Another women, Paulette Horton, an independent contractor who was involved in a deal to provide tutoring services at two high schools, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit program bribery. The 60-year-old consultant admitted that she was the middleman who handed over bribes to Snapp.

Vendor, Glynis Thornton, also pleaded guilty in January, admitting she gave Snapp money in exchange for awarding her company the tutoring contract. In her guilty plea, Thornton explained how the scheme worked: Thornton would give an independent contractor the bribe money for Snapp, that contractor would meet Snapp at a bank, give her the money, and keep some for herself.

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In part from Detroit News: One of the seven current principals charged, Ronald Alexander, 60, of Detroit, principal of Spain Elementary, accepted a $500,000 donation from the “Ellen DeGeneres Show” in February for technology updates, campus renovations and additional staff funding.

DPS school board vice president Ida Short, who attended McQuade’s press conference, said a lack of oversight in the district allowed a conspiracy such as this to happen. Before the state took over the district, school board members were required to approve contracts, Short said.

“We have a czar over the district. …We would ordinarily not have principals approving this level of contract. It’s too much money. It’s too easy for people to get greedy as you see,” Short said. “We want to have the rights of every district in the state — to have an elected school board.”

Steven Rhodes, emergency manager for DPS, said Tuesday the district has suspended business with Shy and all of his companies. He added the district has changed policies to prevent fraud.

“I cannot overstate the outrage that I feel about the conduct that these DPS employees engaged in that led to these charges,” Rhodes said. “And I am sure that this sense of outrage is shared by the other dedicated and committed DPS employees, as well as DPS parents and everyone who is interested in the future success of DPS.”

McQuade said her office received a tip from the state of Michigan after it performed an audit at the Education Achievement Authority that raised several red flags.

After her office investigated the EAA and a federal grand jury indicted three people there on criminal charges, McQuade said they next learned about Shy.

The principals charged in the case were not working with each other, McQuade said, and did not know others were participating in the fraud.

She said the decision to file charges in the case has nothing to do with “DPS or the emergency manager.”

“It’s about these 14 people who breached the public trust. The real victims are students and families who attend Detroit Public Schools. … This case is a real punch in the gut for those who do the right thing,” McQuade said.

Also charged in the case are:

Tanya Bowman, 48, of Novi, former principal of Osborn Collegiate Academy.

Nina Graves-Hicks, 52, of Detroit, former principal of Davis Aerospace Tech High.

Josette Buendia, 50, of Garden City, principal of Bennett Elementary.

James Hearn, 50, of West Bloomfield, principal of Marcus Garvey Academy.

Beverly Campbell, 66, of Southfield, former principal at Rosa Parks School and Greenfield Union Elementary-Middle School.

Gerlma Johnson, 56, of Detroit, former principal at Drew Academy and Earhart Elementary-Middle School.

Stanley Johnson, 62, of Southfield, principal of Hutchinson Elementary.

Tia’Von Moore-Patton, 46, of Farmington Hills, principal at Jerry L. White Center High school.

Willye Pearsall, 65, of Warren, former principal at Thurgood Marshall Elementary school.

Ronnie Sims, 55, of Albion, former principal of Fleming Elementary and Brenda Scott Middle School.

Clara Smith, 67, Southfield, principal at Thirkell Elementary.

Each of the 14 defendants faces up to five years in prison and fines of up to $250,000 on charges of conspiracy to commit federal program bribery.

Shy and Flowers face up to five years in prison and fines of up to $100,000 on the tax evasion charges.

Rhodes said he was advised Tuesday morning by McQuade of the charges and instructed the district’s employee relations department to place the current employees on unpaid administrative leave.

Rhodes said the policies put in place in light of the charges are suspending  all purchases by individual schools until further notice; requiring central office approval for all school-based purchases, suspending the ability by principals and assistant principals to sign off on or execute any vendor agreements and contracts without central office approval by the superintendent’s office, finance and/or procurement.

He is requiring two signatures on all school-based invoices before they will be paid, conducting a review of all purchases made by the employees identified by the U.S. Attorney, launching a full review of all school-based vendor contracts to determine if all or a portion need to be terminated and rebid, and recruiting an independent auditor to do a thorough review and assessment of procurement processes and procedures to ensure they are in compliance with all state and federal rules and regulations.

“The actions of these individuals are reprehensible and represent a breach of the public trust that has deprived our students of more than $2.7 million in resources,” he said.

David P. Gelios, special agent in charge, FBI Detroit Division, said as a former educator, the case strikes to his very core.

“To enrich oneself at the expense of school children is bad enough, but to misapply public funds intended to educate kids in a district where overall needs are so deep, funding sources are so strained, and the need for better education is so crucial, is reprehensible and an insult to those educators working every day to make a better future for our children,” he said.

In October, the FBI launched a corruption investigation involving DPS and the EAA to determine if contracts were awarded to vendors who paid kickbacks.

In December, a federal grand jury in Detroit indicted a former EAA principal and two school vendors on charges of money laundering, conspiracy and bribery.

Prosecutors said Kenyetta Wilbourn Snapp, former principal of Mumford and Denby high schools, was part of a kickback scheme along with co-defendants Paulette Horton and Glynis Thornton.

Horton was an EAA vendor who conspired with Snapp and Thornton, a tutoring vendor, to take money from the federally funded school district to enrich themselves.

All three have entered guilty pleas in the case. Sentencing is scheduled for June.

The EAA was created in 2011 by Gov. Rick Snyder as a school district to turn around Detroit’s lowest performing public schools.

The defendants are expected to turn themselves in for a court hearing in U.S. District Court, McQuade. No dates have been set.

ISIS: Our Soldiers are Everywhere

And a major recruiting center in Europe and Belgium are prisons.

How Belgian prisons became a breeding ground for Islamic extremism

Stephane Medot knows a thing or two about Belgian prisons. He spent 10 years in them. Arrested for carrying out more than a dozen armed bank robberies, the stocky, bald-headed Medot moved from prison to prison, from one cell of his own to another, until he served out his time.

Along the way, he got a front-row seat in a prison system that has become a breeding ground for violent Muslim extremists. Many of those involved in the Paris and Brussels attacks first did short stints behind bars for relatively petty crimes. And there these wayward young people met proselytizers and appear to have acquired a new, lethal sense of purpose.

A Belgian prison is where Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who helped plan the Paris attacks and who was killed in a police raid in November, met Salah Abdeslam, an alleged Paris attacker who was captured in Brussels this month. Salah’s brother Brahim, who blew himself up in Paris, also served time.

Two of the suicide bombers in the Brussels attacks last week, brothers Ibrahim and Khalid el-Bakraoui, had spent time in Belgian prisons for violent offenses that included armed robbery and carjacking.

Medot, now 37, said that from prison to prison, the routine he witnessed was similar. Proselytizing prisoners used exercise hours and small windows in their cells to swap news, copies of the Koran and small favors such as illicit cellphones. Gradually, they won over impressionable youths and taught them to stop drinking and start thinking about perceived injustices such as the invasion of Iraq, the plight of Palestinians or the treatment of their own immigrant families.

The prison guards, who could not understand Arabic, had a “laissez-faire attitude,” he said, and did nothing to stop the pulsating music or political discussions.

“If you’re not a Muslim, you feel the need to adapt to the rules,” said Medot, who is not Muslim. When the hour for prayer arrived, everyone was asked to turn off televisions so as not to disturb the faithful.

For the past year, Belgium’s Ministry of Justice has been planning to change a prison system widely seen as a school for radicals. It is creating two isolated areas, each with room for 20 people, at Hasselt and Ittre prisons for the most radical inmates. At the moment, said ministry spokeswoman Sieghild Lacoere, only five inmates clearly qualify. The segregation is set to begin April 11.

“The best solution for fighting the process of radicalization,” the ministry said in its action plan last year before the Paris and Brussels attacks, is “one part isolation by concentration, completely isolating the radical individuals from the other detainees to avoid a great contamination” and prevent them from “feeding other detainees more of their ideology.”

The ministry also said it would improve living conditions in the overcrowded prisons. Belgium has about 11,000 prisoners, ­Lacoere said, of whom 20 to 30 percent are Muslims, even though Muslims make up only about 6 percent of the population.

France, with Europe’s largest Muslim population, is facing similar problems. It, too, has opened special units, manned by psychologists, historians and sociologists, for potentially violent extremists at five prisons. A year ago it vowed to hire 60 more Muslim chaplains.

Medot said that changing the culture of prison is difficult. He said that youths “arrive alone, feel alone” and that the older Muslim inmates “attract guys who want to become fuller members of the group.”

Medot was in prison when terrorists attacked London, Madrid and a Jewish school in Toulouse, France. He said many prisoners celebrated what their “brothers” did. Medot said that when discussing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, many would say that “Americans stole the [Middle East’s] oil and that this is revenge and this is just.”

For several months, Medot said, he overlapped with Nizar Trabelsi, a professional soccer player turned al-Qaeda follower who confessed in 2003 to an aborted plot to drive a car packed with explosives into Kleine Brogel, a NATO air base in Belgium where U.S. nuclear missiles are thought to be stored. Trabelsi served 10 years in Belgium and then was extradited to the United States, despite condemnation from the European Court of Human Rights.

“He was one of the guys who was seen as a hero,” Medot said. In prison in Belgium, Trabelsi, a Tunisian, taught Arabic by passing books through the cells’ small windows. Though Medot, considered a flight risk, had his own cell, others stayed in cells with two to five people. Trabelsi also played loud Koranic music and prayers from his cell, as well as recordings of bullets and shooting. The guards did nothing except occasionally ask that he turn down the volume.

“The parents will come and visit, and the detainee will say he wants books, wants to find religion and change his ways,” Medot said, “and parents see that as positive, to take a path away from petty crime, away from drugs, away from alcohol. And they don’t know what is happening on the inside.”

But Medot said that the government’s plan to isolate radicals won’t work. Who will decide which prisoners are too radical to stay with other detainees? Won’t they become even more radical in isolation? And what will happen to them when their sentences run out?

Lacoere said the Justice Ministry’s plan includes hiring more experts to “de-radicalize” inmates. She said guards will get special training. She said isolating the radicals isn’t the same as abandoning them; they will get more intensive attention, she said.

Still, she acknowledged, there will be difficult issues. “There is not a lot of knowledge in the academic world on this de-
radicalization. It’s a very hard topic to talk about,” she said. “It’s about influencing people’s ideas, and there’s freedom of speech and thought in our country.”

Salmi Hedi, a Tunisian-born imam, has worked in the Belgian prison system for nearly 20 years trying to de-radicalize inmates. He said Belgium’s 18 penitentiaries share just eight imams and one woman religious counselor. The Justice Ministry has promised 11 more.

He disagrees with the government’s diagnosis and concern about “contamination” by radicals.

“Are they viruses? It is not a constructive view,” Hedi said. “It is very dangerous. If you put these people together, you cannot control them anymore. They will feel stronger.”

Customs Border Patrol in Pacific, Whoa

US agents nearly caught $194 million worth of cocaine in a narco submarine

US Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine Operations agents had a close call with a high-value target in the Pacific Ocean.

The crew of a P-3 Long Range Tracker, working as part of a joint military-law-enforcement task force, picked up a self-propelled semi-submersible traveling in the eastern Pacific Ocean on March 2.

Agents later intercepted the semi-submersible, on which they found more than 12,800 pounds of cocaine, an amount with an estimated value of $193,939,000, according to a CBP release issued on March 24. US agents arrested four people operating the craft.

The seizure was short-lived however, as the “semi-submersible became unstable and sank,” the CBP said in a release. Semi-submersible crafts used for drug smuggling are also referred to as “narco submarines.”

Despite losing the cargo, the CBP characterized the operation as a success. “Our crews will continue to take every opportunity to disrupt this type of transnational criminal activity,” said John Wassong, the director of the National Air Security Operations Center in Corpus Christi, Texas.

Semi-submersibles used for smuggling are usually built to travel just below the surface, with just an exhaust pipe, a wheelhouse, and an airstack emerging from the water, according to Vice News. The vessels are often camouflaged, and many of them are constructed in Colombia, a major hub for cocaine production.

View gallery

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narco submarine

(US Customs and Border Patrol)
A semi-submersible transporting drugs was captured at sea last year by US agents, but it sank before it could be fully unloaded.

“Typically crews are made up of an experienced sailor, the so-called “captain” who can also be the person who handles communication with the ‘base,'” Javier Guerrero, a researcher focused on drug-trade technology, told Vice in 2015. “Most likely the crew is made up of experienced sailors,” as well, said Guerrero, and their experience and relationship with the cargo’s owner or the narco sub’s owner determines the command hierarchy on the vessel.

The emphasis traffickers have put on seaborne smuggling is one of the latest logistical and technical developments in the drug trade. Throughout much of 1970s and 1980s, most trafficking routes, via air and sea, transited the Caribbean. As interdiction efforts increased, smugglers switched to land and air routes through Mexico, eventually branching into more intense maritime smuggling.

“They started to build the submarines and they’re still using them, but it’s aircraft, commercial freighters, speedboats. You name it and they have it,” Mike Vigil, the former chief of international operations for the DEA, told Business Insider. “They never settle on one method of transportation or on one route. They’re always exploring.”

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Colombia cocaine submarine

(REUTERS/John Vizcaino)
Counternarcotics police guard an under-construction submersible that was seized from the “Los Urabenos” drugs cartel, in Puerto Escondido, Monteria province October 18, 2011. Colombian authorities said that the submersible ship seized on Monday could be used to carry six tons of cocaine illegally.

In 2012, 80% of the illegal drugs smuggled to the US came on maritime routes, and 30% of the illegal drugs delivered to US shores via the sea were carried on narco submarines, according to a 2014 study cited by Vice News.

In late summer last year, US agents intercepted a semi-submersible laden with roughly eight tons of cocaine. US authorities offloaded about six tons of the illicit cargo before the vessel sank. The capture and subsequent sinking of the narco sub were recorded by the Coast Guard.

Had US agents been able to bring this latest shipment to shore, it would have been one of the more substantial hauls captured in recent months. In early February, Air and Marines Operations agents intercepted a 2,300-pound shipment with an estimated value of $172 million. In early March, CBP agents caught a 154-pound shipment in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, which had an estimated value of $2 million.

Air and Marine Operations agents took part in 198 seizure, disruption, or interdiction efforts in their 42-million-square-mile operation zone — which spans the Pacific Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and the Gulf of Mexico — in fiscal year 2015, capturing over 200,000 pounds of cocaine.

Only 5 Years?

Prison for smuggler who guided people into U.S.

Efrain Delgado Rosales had been caught with undocumented immigrants 23 times in less than 18 years

— An apparent career smuggler nabbed while guiding four undocumented immigrants through the Otay Mountains last year was sentenced Friday to five years in prison.

U.S. Border Patrol agents had caught Efrain Delgado Rosales with undocumented immigrants 23 times in less than 17 years, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

His latest encounter came in November, when agents spotted the 35-year-old guiding the foursome through rugged East County terrain.

The four men told authorities that Delgado had picked them up at a stash house in Mexico, led them to the border then left them for several hours. As they waited, thieves turned up and robbed them of all of their cash — thousands of dollars.

Delgado returned and — indifferent to the robbery — guided them over the border and through the mountains. While hiking, he left behind three men who could not keep his pace.

At the begging of the fourth man, he eventually returned to collect the distressed trio, each of whom had paid $5,000 to be smuggled into the country.

The details they gave investigators about their experience with Delgado were strikingly similar to an instance in 2014, when a man smuggled into the country died while hiking in a rugged stretch of the Otay Mountains. One of his companions later identified Delgado as their guide.

Federal prosecutors said agents have apprehended Delgado 24 times since 1999, and in all but one instance, he was found with at least two and up to 46 undocumented immigrants.

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Brandon Judd, president of the American Federation of Government Employees National Border Patrol Council

March 21, 2016:

Obama Administration Official Confirms “Catch and Release” Policy

Border Patrol union chief tells the Judiciary Committee explosive information about the Administration’s policy of releasing unlawful immigrants into U.S.

Washington, D.C.– Following the Immigration and Border Security Subcommittee’s hearing on the ongoing surge at the southwest border, the House Judiciary Committee received information from the head of the Border Patrol union showing that a high-ranking Obama Administration official confirmed to Border Patrol agents the Administration’s policy of releasing recent border crossers with no intention of ever removing them.

In his responses to questions submitted for the record to the Committee, Brandon Judd, President of the American Federation of Government Employees National Border Patrol Council, stated that on August 26, 2015 he and two other Border Patrol agents met with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to discuss concerns about the Administration’s policy of releasing unlawful immigrants into the United States. During the meeting, Deputy Secretary Mayorkas confirmed to the agents that the Administration has no intention of removing unlawful immigrants coming to the border as part of the ongoing surge. Specifically, he stated:

“Why would we [issue a Notice to Appear to] those we have no intention of deporting? We should not place someone in deportation proceedings, when the courts already have a 3-6 year backlog.” 

This de facto policy contradicts the Obama Administration’s so-called enforcement priorities issued on November 20, 2014 by DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson. Under the guidelines, unlawful immigrants who came to the United States after January 1, 2014 and recent border crossers are deemed a priority for removal and are to be placed in deportation proceedings. However, Deputy Secretary Mayorkas’ comments to Border Patrol agents contradict the Administration’s own policies put forth by Secretary Johnson.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) issued the following statement on this information provided to the Committee:

“Not only has President Obama sought to undermine our immigration laws at every opportunity possible, now his political appointees have implemented a ‘catch and release’ policy that contradicts the Administration’s already weak enforcement priorities. Rather than take the steps necessary to end the border surge, the Obama Administration is encouraging more to come by forcing Border Patrol agents to release unlawful immigrants into the United States with no intention of ever removing them. 

“The ongoing lack of enforcement and dismantling of our immigration laws undermines both our nation’s immigration system and the American people’s faith in their government.”

What about King Midas?

El Chapo’s money man arrested in Oaxaca

OAXACA, Mexico, March 28 (UPI) A man reported to be one of drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán top money launderers has been arrested, Mexican Federal Police said Sunday.

Juan Manuel Alvarez Inzunza, 34, one of the top money launderers for Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, was captured while vacationing in Oaxaca, Mexico by Mexican Federal Police and the Mexican Army. He is alleged to have laundered about $4 billion over the last ten years. Photo by Mexican Federal Police

Juan Manuel Alvarez Inzunza, 34, alleged to have laundered about $4 billion in the last ten years, was arrested while vacationing in the southern state of Oaxaca, police tweeted.

Police said IInzunza, nicknamed “El Rey Midas” or “King Midas”, laundered about $300 million to $400 million dollars a year from the Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel through a network of companies and currency exchange centers in Mexico, the United States, Columbia and Panama, MSN reported.

IInzunza was arrested on a provisional extradition warrant from the U.S., where he is wanted for money laundering.

Guzmán was one of the heads of the Sinaloa Cartel, considered Mexico’s most profitable drug gang. His escape from a maximum-security prison in Mexico drew world-wide attention in 2015. He was recaptured after a shootout on Jan. 8.

FBI Upping the Hillary Investigation

Hillary Clinton email investigation enters final stages as FBI interviews loom

LATimes: Federal prosecutors investigating the possible mishandling of classified materials on Hillary Clinton’s private email server have begun the process of setting up formal interviews with some of her longtime and closest aides, according to two people familiar with the probe, an indication that the inquiry is moving into its final phases.

Those interviews and the final review of the case, however, could still take many weeks, all but guaranteeing that the investigation will continue to dog Clinton’s presidential campaign through most, if not all, of the remaining presidential primaries.

No dates have been set for questioning the advisors, but a federal prosecutor in recent weeks has called their lawyers to alert them that he would soon be doing so, the sources said. Prosecutors also are expected to seek an interview with Clinton herself, though the timing remains unclear.

The interviews by FBI agents and prosecutors will play a significant role in helping them better understand whether Clinton or her aides knowingly or negligently discussed classified government secrets over a non-secure email system when she served as secretary of State.

The meetings also are an indication that much of the investigators’ background work – recovering deleted emails, understanding how the server operated and determining whether it was breached – is nearing completion.

“The interviews are critical to understand the volume of information they have accumulated,” said James McJunkin, former head of the FBI’s Washington field office.  “They are likely nearing the end of the investigation and the agents need to interview these people to put the information in context. They will then spend time aligning these statements with other information, emails, classified documents, etc., to determine whether there is a prosecutable case.”

Many legal experts believe that Clinton faces little risk of being prosecuted for using the private email system to conduct official business when she served as secretary of State, though that decision has raised questions among some about her judgment. They noted that using a private email system was not banned at the time, and others in government had used personal email to transact official business.

The bigger question is whether she or her aides distributed classified material in email systems that fell outside of the department’s secure classified system. But even if prosecutors determine that she did, chances she will be found criminally liable are low. U.S. law makes it a crime for someone to knowingly or willfully retain classified information, handle it in a grossly negligent manner or to pass it to someone not entitled to see it.

Clinton has denied using the email account to send or receive materials marked classified. Though some emails have since been deemed to be too sensitive to release publicly, Clinton’s campaign has attributed that to overzealous intelligence officials and “over-classification run amok.”

Legally it doesn’t matter if the emails were marked as classified or not, since government officials are obligated to recognize sensitive material and guard against its release. But legal experts noted that such labels would be helpful to prosecutors seeking to prove she knew the information was classified, a key element of the law.

“The facts of the case do not fit the law,” said Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at American University. “Reasonable folks may think that federal law ought to prohibit what Hillary did, but it’s just not clear to me that it currently does.”

Even so, her use of the private server, which was based at her home in New York, has become fodder for Clinton’s political foes as she campaigns to secure the Democratic nomination for president.

Though Sen. Bernie Sanders has largely declined to use the email scandal against her in the Democratic primary, Republicans have repeatedly said she should be indicted or disqualified from running for the nation’s top office.

At a recent Democratic debate, Clinton grew exasperated when asked what she would do if indicted. “That’s not going to happen,” she said.

Her attorney, David Kendall, declined to comment. Her campaign spokesman, Brian Fallon, said in an email that Clinton is ready to work with investigators to conclude the investigation.

“She first offered last August to meet and answer any questions they might have,” Fallon wrote. “She would welcome the opportunity to help them complete their work.”

Lawyers for her closest aides – Huma Abedin, Jake Sullivan, Cheryl Mills and Philippe Renes – either did not respond to messages or declined to comment.

The Justice Department and FBI began their investigation after receiving what is known as a security referral in July from the inspector general for U.S. intelligence agencies, which at the time were in the midst of reviewing paper copies of nearly 30,500 emails Clinton turned over in 2014 that she said were work-related.

The State Department has since released all 3,871 pages of Clinton’s emails in its possession and has determined that 22 of her emails contained “top secret” information, though they were not marked as such as the time. Hundreds of others contained material that was either secret or confidential, two lower levels of classification.

After stepping down as secretary of State, Clinton, who has said she used her personal email to conduct personal and official business as a matter of convenience, told her staff to delete 31,830 emails on the server that she felt were non-work-related.

In August, the FBI obtained the server and has since recovered most, if not all, of the deleted correspondence, said a person familiar with the investigation.

FBI agents have finished their review of the server and the correspondence turned over by Clinton to the State Department. They have interviewed a number of former aides so they could better understand how the system was used and why Clinton chose to use it, the person said.

Federal prosecutors granted immunity to one of those aides, Bryan Pagliano, who helped set up the server in Clinton’s home. He has cooperated with the federal investigation and provided security logs that revealed no evidence of foreign hacking, according to a law enforcement official.

His lawyer, Mark MacDougall, did not respond to messages seeking comment.

The probe is being closely watched and supervised by the Justice Department’s top officials and prosecutors. FBI Director James B. Comey has said he has been regularly briefed on the investigation, which is being overseen by prosecutors in the Justice Department’s national security division.

The decision on whether to prosecute could be difficult. Vladeck, the law professor noted the differences between Clinton’s email issue and two previous cases involving the mishandling of classified material that resulted in prosecutions and guilty pleas.

In 2005, Sandy Berger, a former national security advisor, pleaded guilty to the unlawful removal and retention of national security information after being caught trying to smuggle classified documents out of the National Archives.

In another case, Gen. David Petraeus, a former CIA director, was investigated for knowingly allowing a mistress to read classified material as she researched a book about him. Petraeus eventually pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified material and was spared prison time.

Legal experts said Petraeus’ actions were far more serious than anything Clinton is accused of doing. Clinton’s emails, even those later deemed classified, were sent to aides cleared to read them, for example, and not private citizens, they said.

Several of the lawyers involved in Clinton’s case are familiar with the differences. Petraeus’ defense lawyer was Kendall, who also represents Clinton. And a prosecutor helping oversee the Clinton email investigation was part of the team that obtained Petraeus’ guilty plea.

 

“Those cases are just so different from what Clinton is accused of doing,” Vladeck said. “And the Justice Department lawyers know it.”

While she is not likely to face legal jeopardy, the emails could cause some political heartburn when the aides are questioned. However, short of an indictment or an explosive revelation, the controversy is not likely to alter the overall dynamics of the primary race or general election, political observers said.

“This is clearly disruptive to the campaign,” said Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster. “It will take her off message and coverage about important aides being questioned is not coverage you’d like to have. However, this issue is largely dismissed by Democratic primary voters and baked into the cake for the general electorate.”