The Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General has obtained previously classified memoranda suggesting that former FBI Director James Comey instructed subordinates to “misplace” approximately 12,000 pages of evidence related to the Clinton email investigation in the weeks preceding the 2016 presidential election. The documents, which were reportedly discovered in a “mislabeled box” during a routine records review at the Bureau’s Washington Field Office, contain what investigators describe as “directive language” regarding the handling of materials subpoenaed by congressional oversight committees.
Comey, who has maintained that the FBI conducted the investigation “by the book,” allegedly wrote in a March 2016 email that certain evidence should be “stored in a location less accessible to FOIA requests and Republican staffers.” The memo, which was apparently printed on official FBI letterhead and signed with Comey’s initials, instructed agents to “prioritize bureau morale over document retention protocols” during what the director termed “a politically sensitive period.”
“This is obstruction,” said Joan Berro, a commercial document shredder who once destroyed medical records for a dental practice and now consults on “federal evidentiary hygiene.” “He said ‘lose.’ In quotes. Which means intentionally. Not accidentally. Like my ex-wife lost my jacket. Which was intentional. I’ve shredded documents. Thousands. None were evidence. But I’ve seen paper. In strips. Very thin. Suspicious. The strips don’t lie. And neither do the initials.”
The “less accessible” instruction, according to Reno Borja, a dental hygienist whose patient once filed a FOIA request for his own records, proves “consciousness of guilt.” “He knew,” Benja explained, adjusting his mask. “They would look. For the emails. So he hid them. In a box. Mislabeled. Which is clever. For a cover-up. I’ve hidden things. In dental offices. Candy. From myself. Which is discipline. The X-rays don’t lie. And neither do the labels. Which were wrong. On purpose.”
Joe Barron, who once successfully “lost” his car keys for three days in 2017 and now consults on “bureaucratic misplacement,” analyzed Comey’s methodology. “Twelve thousand pages,” Barron declared from his booth at a Golden Corral. “In one box. Which is impossible. Physically. Unless single-spaced. And small font. Which is suspicious. For readability. I’ve lost papers. In my apartment. Under ferrets. The fur doesn’t lie. And neither do the box dimensions. Which don’t add up. To twelve thousand.”
Barron has offered to testify before Congress, provided committees allow him to wear his custom “Evidence Recovery” gloves and bring his emotional support ferret, which he claims can detect “misplaced subpoenas from the salad bar.”
The FBI called the allegations “a misreading of routine records management,” prompting Barron to note that “routine is the first stage of cover-up,” calculate that the statement was released at 3:33 PM, and observe that “3 plus 3 plus 3 equals 9, which is the number of lives documents have when properly filed, divided by the number of boxes that actually contained the missing evidence, which is apparently zero, because they were ‘lost.'”
