Brad Pitt will not be charged with any crime after an investigation into allegations involving his 15-year-old son Maddox, the FBI announced.
The actor had been accused of mistreating Maddox on board a private flight from France to LA.
Brad Pitt’s wife, Angelina Jolie, filed for divorce soon afterwards and is seeking sole custody of their six children.
Image source Wikipedia
Social workers investigating the same claim cleared Brad Pitt two weeks ago.
The FBI said: “In response to allegations made following a flight… carrying Mr. Brad Pitt and his children, the FBI has conducted a review of the circumstances and will not pursue further investigation.
“No charges have been filed in this matter.”
Brad Pitt, 52, is seeking joint legal and physical custody of the couple’s six children, three of whom were adopted by Angelina Jolie before the couple began dating in 2004.
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt married just two years ago, in a private ceremony at their estate in Provence.
Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton has blamed her surprise election loss on interventions by the FBI director, James Comey.
James Comey had revived the inquiry into her use of email while secretary of state shortly before Election Day had stopped her campaign’s momentum, Hillary Clinton said.
She was speaking to top party donors in a phone call, which was leaked to the media.
Protests are continuing against Donald Trump’s win.
In New York, about 2,000 marchers headed for the skyscraper where the president-elect lives, shouting “not my president”.
Anti-Trump activists have held daily protests in US cities since his election victory was confirmed on Wednesday.
Donald Trump seems to be rowing back on some of his campaign pledges. Having promised to scrap President Barack Obama’s Affordable Act – ObamaCare – he now says he is open to leaving intact key parts of the act.
The Republican is due to be sworn in on January 20, taking over from President Obama, who will have completed two terms in office.
Hillary Clinton, who served as Barack Obama’s secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, has been keeping a low profile since conceding victory.
On October 28, James Comey informed Congress that the FBI was examining newly discovered emails sent or received by Hillary Clinton, thus reviving an investigation which had been completed in July.
Then, on November 6, two days before the election, James Comey announced in a second letter that he was standing by his original assessment – that Hillary Clinton should not face criminal charges.
“There are lots of reasons why an election like this is not successful,” Hillary Clinton told the donors on a farewell conference call on November 12.
“But our analysis is that Comey’s letter raising doubts that were groundless, baseless, proven to be, stopped our momentum. We dropped, and we had to keep really pushing ahead to regain our advantage.”
Hillary Clinton added that James Comey’s later recommendation that she should face no charges had energized Donald Trump’s supporters.
Her campaign team said that despite Hillary Clinton being cleared of criminal behavior, the move only revived Donald Trump’s claim that the Democratic candidate was being protected by a rigged system.
Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton says she is “confident” a new FBI probe linked to her emails will not change its original finding that she should not be prosecuted.
She called on the FBI director to explain the new inquiry to the American people.
James Comey earlier said the FBI was looking into newly found messages.
The latest emails came to light during a separate inquiry into top Clinton aide Huma Abedin’s estranged husband, former congressman Anthony Weiner.
Devices belonging to Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner were seized in an investigation into whether he sent explicit emails to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina.
Hillary Clinton said: “The American people deserve to get the full and complete facts immediately.
“It’s imperative that the bureau explain this issue in question, whatever it is, without any delay.”
She highlighted that James Comey had said he did not know the significance of the new emails, adding: “I’m confident (that) whatever they are will not change the conclusion reached in July.”
Donald Trump, however, described the FBI investigation as “the biggest political scandal since Watergate”, referring to the 1970s scandal that engulfed Republican President Richard Nixon.
“It’s everybody’s hope that justice at last can be delivered,” the Republican candidate told supporters at a rally in Iowa.
“The FBI would never have reopened this case at this time unless it were a most egregious criminal offence.”
James Comey said the FBI would investigate if the newly discovered emails contain classified information.
The FBI chief said in a letter to Congress that investigators had discovered the emails “in connection with an unrelated case… that appear to be pertinent to the investigation”.
James Comey said he “cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant, and I cannot predict how long it will take us to complete this additional work”.
The FBI has already established Hillary Clinton had classified information on a private email server.
In July, James Comey said Hillary Clinton’s handling of sensitive material during her 2009-2013 tenure as secretary of state was “extremely careless”, but cleared her of any criminal wrongdoing.
The revelation that Hillary Clinton handled sensitive information while breaking federal rules by running her own email server out of her upstate New York home has dogged her campaign since last year.
Her campaign chairman John Podesta criticised the FBI’s “extraordinary” timing.
The revelation comes just 11 days before Americans go to the polls in the presidential election.
Hillary Clinton is five points ahead of Donald Trump, according to a Real Clear Politics average.
Golfer Phil Mickelson and Las Vegas gambler William Walters are being investigated by the FBI over a possible insider trading involving billionaire investor Carl Icahn.
The inquiry is reportedly examining whether Phil Mickelson and William Walters may have traded shares illegally, based on information provided by Carl Icahn.
Phil Mickelson’s lawyers say he is not the target of an investigation.
Carl Icahn, 78, denies giving insider information. William Walters has not yet commented.
Phil Mickelson, 43, has won five major championships and is one of the US’s highest-paid sportsmen.
Phil Mickelson has won five major championships and is one of the US’s highest-paid sportsmen
The FBI, along with the Securities and Exchange Commission and federal prosecutors in Manhattan, are said to be looking into trading in two different stocks.
The investigation, which began three years ago, is focusing on trades in cleaning products company Clorox.
Carl Icahn, a billionaire investor and prominent activist, was mounting a takeover bid for Clorox around the time that Phil Mickelson and William Walters placed their trades, the New York Times reports.
“We do not know of any investigation,” Carl Icahn told Reuters news agency, saying he was proud of his 50-year “unblemished record”.
Investigators are also reportedly looking into trades that Phil Mickelson, a three-time Masters champion, and William Walters made relating to Dean Foods, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The New York Times quotes sources saying federal authorities are looking into trades placed in August 2012 just before the company announced quarterly results.
Those trades appeared to have no connection to Carl Icahn, the newspaper added.
The FBI and other federal agencies have not commented publicly on the allegations.
None of the men have been directly accused of any wrongdoing.
According to a new report, Russian authorities secretly recorded one of the Boston bombers discussing jihad with his mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, in 2011 but failed to alert U.S. security agencies.
U.S. officials were told for the first time this week that two calls of note were discovered when the Russian internal security service, the RSB, were bugging calls at the Tsarnaevs family home in Dagestan, according to reports.
The recording picked up a “vague conversation” about jihad between either Dzhokhar or Tamerlan Tsarnaev and their mother Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, the Associated Press reported.
It also picked up a phone call between Zubeidat Tsarnaeva and a man under FBI investigation living in Southern Russia.
American security sources anonymously revealed the information to the news agency and said if the calls had been flagged to the FBI, the agency may have conducted a more detailed investigation into the two men.
There was no evidence of a plot against America in the calls, according to the report.
Russian authorities secretly recorded one of the Boston bombers discussing jihad with his mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, in 2011 but failed to alert U.S. security agencies
The news comes as the FBI attempts to defend itself against criticism that it failed to fully investigate Tamerlan Tsarnaev that year.
In January, the FBI investigated and interviewed the family after Russian authorities flagged the elder bomber as a possible security threat.
It is not clear why the phone calls would not have been reported to American security officers as part of that briefing and the RSB were unavailable for comment.
Following their probe, the FBI concluded Tamerlan Tsarnaev did not present a threat and ceased monitoring him stating they saw no links to “terrorism activity, domestic or foreign”.
Sen. Lindsay Graham (R. South Carolina) said the agency had “dropped the ball” in that probe.
On Friday, the New York Times reported that the Russian government followed up their concerns over Tamerlan Tsarnaev six months later – asking the CIA for whatever information it had on him.
It is not clear what prompted the Russian request but the CIA review agreed with the FBI that Tamerlan Tsarnaev posed no threat.
As a precaution they placed him on a 70,000 name watch-list called the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE).
However, there were mistakes in both the spelling of his name and in his date of birth, so his six month departure from the country in 2012 wasn’t properly identified, according to the Times.
The first Russian request came in March 2011 through the FBI’s office in the United States Embassy in Moscow.
In a one-page request they said Tamerlan Tsarnaev “had changed drastically since 2010” and was preparing “to join unspecified underground groups”.
By June 2011 the FBI said they were satisfied he provided no threat and notified Russia.
They also added Tamerlan Tsarnaev to another watch-list – the Treasury Enforcement Communications System.
According to the Times, the FBI repeatedly went back to Russia to request more detail but they failed to provide any new information.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva has come under increasing scrutiny in recent days given her outspoken denial of her sons’ actions and wild accusations of a cover-up.
She has repeatedly said her sons were framed and even claimed blood on the streets, after the bombings, was paint.
On Friday, it emerged agents now consider Zubeidat Tsarnaeva “a person of interest” in their investigation.
“She [Zubeidat Tsarnaeva] is a person of interest that we’re looking at to see if she helped radicalize her son, or had contacts with other people or other terrorist groups,” Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, a Democrat from Maryland, who serves on the House Intelligence Committee, said.
Both sons appear to have had a close relationship with their mother.
Just before his death Tamerlan Tsarnaev made a final call to her saying: “Mama I love you.”
She was intending to travel with her husband to the U.S. last week but both delayed those plans.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva said any suggestion she has links to terrorist activity are “lies and hypocrisy”.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, the mother of the Boston bombing suspects Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, watches the video of her dead son’s mutilated body and cries, her lawyer revealed on Tuesday, after it emerged that she is to be questioned by US investigators.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva appeared publicly outside her home for the first time since her sons Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were named as suspects. She was ushered past journalists and into a taxi, which sped away.
US investigators traveled to southern Russia today to speak to Zubeidat Tsarnaeva and her husband Anzor Tsarnaev, an American Embassy official said.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva is in Dagestan, a predominantly Muslim province in Russia’s Caucasus, where Islamic militants have waged an insurgency against Russian security sources for years.
The family’s lawyer Heda Saratova, asked for the family to be left alone and said that the parents had just seen pictures of the mutilated body of their elder son Tamerlan Tsarnaev and were not up to speaking with anyone at the moment.
“The mother is in very bad shape,” Heda Saratova said.
“She watches the video [of Tamerlan Tsarnaev] and cries.”
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva appeared publicly outside her home in Dagestan for the first time since her sons Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were named as suspects
The trip by the US team was made possible because of Russian government cooperation with the FBI investigation into the bombing at the Boston Marathon.
Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev are accused of setting off the bombs that killed three people and wounded more than 180 others on April 15.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed in a police shootout, while his 19-year-old brother Dzhokhar was captured alive but badly wounded.
The embassy official said he could not confirm whether the US investigators had already talked to the suspects’ parents.
“Naturally, the parents are not ready to meet with anyone because the grief is enormous,” Russian official Zaurbek Sadakhanov told a crowd of journalist in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan.
“They … are asking to be left alone, at least for a while, to be able to recover.
“As to the case, I think that detectives and policemen in the United States are knowledgeable and will find out what happened in an objective and unbiased way.”
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva is from Dagestan, while the suspects’ father, Anzor Tsarnaev is from neighboring Chechnya.
Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev had spent little time in either place before the family moved to the US a decade ago, but Tamerlan was in Russia for six months last year.
The father of the two Boston bombing suspects will apparently travel to the US later this week in order to seek “justice and the truth.
Anzor Tsarnaev says he has “lots of questions for the police” and is keen ‘to clear up many things’”when he arrives from his home in Makhachkala in Russia.
He had previously said that he would return to America this week in the wake of the death of his elder son Tamerlan and the arrest of 19-year-old Dzhokhar.
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva added that the family hoped to bring Tamerlan’s body back to Russia.
The FBI is joining an investigation into suspicious trades ahead of the Heinz takeover deal last week.
The US financial regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), is already suing unnamed traders for insider dealing.
Last Thursday, Heinz was bought for $23 billion by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway fund and 3G Capital.
Unusual trading activity in the shares was noticed the previous day.
“The FBI is aware of trading anomalies the day before Heinz’s announcement” a spokesman said.
“The FBI is consulting with the SEC to determine if a crime was committed.”
The FBI is joining an investigation into suspicious trades ahead of the Heinz takeover deal last week
The SEC believes that some traders knew about the takeover before it was announced and made $1.7 million from the knowledge. It obtained an emergency court order to freeze assets in a Swiss-based account.
The traders in question made risky bets that Heinz’s stock price would increase, using financial instruments called options. After the official announcement of the deal Heinz’s share price rose by 20%.
“Irregular and highly suspicious options trading immediately in front of a merger or acquisition announcement is a serious red flag that traders may be improperly acting on confidential non-public information” said the SEC’s head of the Market Abuse Unit, Daniel Hawke.
There is no implication that Heinz or its new owners have committed any wrongdoing.
The SEC said a bank account at Goldman Sachs was used. Goldman Sachs has said it is co-operating with the investigation.
The head of the House Intelligence Committee suggested on Sunday that President Barack Obama might have known about former CIA Director David Petraeus’ extra-marital affair before the November election, and said Attorney General Eric Holder should address this question soon before Congress.
U.S. Representative Mike Rogers, a Republican, said Eric Holder’s statement that the Justice Department had not informed the president before the election implied that Holder might have told Barack Obama privately.
Mike Rogers noted that the FBI investigation of the communications between David Petraeus and his biographer Paula Broadwell arose due to concern over a counter-intelligence threat. Both David Petraeus and Paula Broadwell have said they did not share any security secrets, and investigators have said they have found no security breach.
“It probably should have been brought forward earlier as a national security threat,” Mike Rogers said.
“I’m not sure that the president was not told before Election Day. The attorney general said that the Department of Justice did not notify the president, but we don’t know if the attorney general…[notified him],” he said.
Mike Rogers said Eric Holder should come before the intelligence committees to discuss it.
“We could resolve this very quickly with a conversation in the intelligence spaces if he did have that conversation with the president.”
Barack Obama may have known about David Petraeus affair with Paula Broadwell before election
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein disagreed, saying Holder had explained to the intelligence committees there was no notification while the investigation was under way. Justice and the FBI took this approach, she said, “so there is an ability to move ahead without any political weighing-in on any side”.
David Petraeus admitted to the affair and resigned his post at the CIA three days after Barack Obama was elected to a second term on November 6.
Republican U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham called the FBI investigation of the affair “the oddest story in the world” and doubted Barack Obama knew before the election.
Despite the ongoing FBI investigation into the extra-marital affair that led to his resignation as Director of the CIA, David Petraeus has agreed to testify this Friday before a House Committee on the Benghazi consulate attack.
The hearing, which will be held before the Senate Intelligence Committee, is closed to the public and the media and the retired four-star general will answer questions on the CIA’s knowledge and handling of the September 11th assault that left U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other American dead.
Last night it was confirmed by the Committee that David Petraeus would appear before them at 7.30 a.m. putting an end to the speculation the former CIA chief would decline to testify following his resignation over the Paula Broadwell affair.
David Petraeus hopes that by offering to give testimony he will clear up some of the wilder rumors that are circulating.
“He did not like the conspiracies going around that somehow he had something to hide on Benghazi,” said retired Colonel Peter Mansoor who served as David Petraeus’ executive officer in Iraq.
“I think his offer to testify crossed with the Congress’ request to him to testify. But anyway, he looks forward to that.”
David Petraeus has agreed to testify this Friday before a House Committee on the Benghazi consulate attack
This comes as the former CIA director told his close friend Peter Mansoor that he was ignoring the media firestorm that has erupted in the wake of his resignation.
“He wants to maintain a distance and focus on his family at this time,” said retired Peter Mansoor to CNN.
“He realizes it was a severe and morally reprehensible action, but he violated no laws.”
Asked how David Petraeus, 60, was dealing with the scandal, Peter Mansoor said: “He describes it as putting one foot in front of the other, and then repeating the process. So it’s going to be a long, long road of healing for them. He understands that and he’s focusing on it.”
Sources have told CBS’ Margaret Brennan that intelligence officials will show footage from unmanned drones that were overhead during the assault.
“General Petraeus is willing to come before the committee and the details are being worked out,” Senator Diane Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said today. No date for his testimony has been set.
Dianne Feinstein has been among those in Congress who have complained that lawmakers should have been notified about an FBI investigation that led to the disclosure of David Petraeus’ affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell.
But she said that David Petraeus’ testimony to her committee will be limited to the Benghazi attacks that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others. David Petraeus was CIA director at the time of the attacks and visited Libya afterward.
David Petraeus was originally supposed to give evidence to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday before his resignation and subsequent investigation that has expanded to include General John Allen, the chief of U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
When asked if there had been a national security breach with the Petraeus affair, Feinstein replied: “I have no evidence that there was at this time.”
An FBI agent was pulled off the investigation into David Petraeus’s illicit contact with Paula Broadwell when he reportedly became obsessed with Jill Kelley, the other woman involved in the probe, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The FBI found that the agent had sent shirtless photos of himself to Jill Kelley, the Tampa woman who reportedly received a half dozen emails from Paula Broadwell that warned her to stay away from David Petraeus. The emails were sent from anonymous accounts.
That same agent was a friend of Jill Kelley’s and he had started the FBI investigation into the emails – which eventually led to David Petraeus’s downfall – after Kelley came to him for help upon receiving the anonymous threats.
The FBI declined to identify the agent, who is now under an internal investigation by the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility.
After Jill Kelley, a married mother of three, told the agent about the emails, he referred the matter to a cyber crimes unit.
Shortly thereafter, the agent was barred from the case over concerns that he “might have grown obsessed with the matter”, the Wall Street Journal reports.
An FBI agent was pulled off the investigation into David Petraeus’s illicit contact with Paula Broadwell when he reportedly became obsessed with Jill Kelley
Even after he was prohibited from involvement in the case, the agent decided to contact a member of Congress, Republican David Reichert, about the matter.
He complained that senior FBI officials were going to “sweep the matter under the rug”, the FBI learned.
Meanwhile, investigators had traced the harassing emails back to accounts used by Paula Broadwell, a 40-year-old married mother of two from Charlotte, North Carolina. In one of the emails, Paula Broadwell accused Jill Kelley of touching “him” underneath a table and another email asked if Kelley’s husband was aware of her actions, according to the newspaper.
Jill Kelley, 37, is a volunteer who organizes social events for military families in the Tampa area. She often hosts the events at her million-dollar Bayshore Boulevard home, which is located only a couple miles from MacDill Air Force base, where David Petraeus was leader of the U.S. Central Command.
“The Kelley mansion became the place to be seen for coalition officers,” according to theTampa Bay Times.
Jill Kelley’s husband, Dr. Scott Kelley, is a highly sought-after surgeon who specializes in a rare type of minimally invasive surgery to cure cancer of the esophagus.
Since the Kelleys have been in Tampa, one or both have been subjects of lawsuits nine times – including an $11,000 judgment against them that originated in Pennsylvania, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
Paul Kranz, father of David Petraeus’ mistress Paula Broadwell, has defended his daughter as an “exceptional person”, saying he supports her 100 per cent after details of her sordid affair with the decorated general were made public.
David Petraeus’s relationship with Paula Broadwell, his biographer, was made public on Friday after an FBI investigation which suspected corruption between the pair.
Paula Broadwell’s father Paul Kranz, a retired high school basketball coach, suggested on Sunday that the explosive revelations that led to David Petraeus resigning as CIA director, have been used to cover up a bigger scandal.
Paul Kranz told the Daily News: “This is about something else entirely, and the truth will come out.”
Paula Broadwell’s father Paul Kranz, a retired high school basketball coach, suggested on Sunday that the explosive revelations that led to David Petraeus resigning as CIA director, have been used to cover up a bigger scandal
He refused to elaborate on the information at his home in Bismarck, North Dakota on Sunday, where he lives with his wife Nadene Kranz.
“This is about something else entirely, and the truth will come out,” Paul Kranz told the New York Daily News outside his home in Bismarck, North Dakota.
“There is a lot more that is going to come out. You wait and see. There’s a lot more here than meets the eye.”
He added: “I stand by my daughter. She is an exceptional person.”
Yet other members of Paula Broadwell’s family seemed much more shaken, revealing that they only learned of the alleged affair as they watched reports of David Petraeus’s dramatic resignation on Friday.
“They didn’t find out about the affair until they saw it on the news Friday night,” the grandmother of Paula Broadwell’s husband, Scott, added.
“Everyone’s reaction was shock. We were all shell-shocked.”
The grandmother, who would only identify herself by her first name, Sylvia, added Scott Broadwell’s parents “felt like the rug was pulled out from under them”.
David Petraeus quit his post as CIA director on Friday while offering an apology over the affair. He issued a statement acknowledging the affair after President Obama accepted his resignation, which was announced by the CIA soon after.
Members of US Congress said Sunday they want to know more details about the FBI investigation that revealed an extramarital affair between ex-CIA Director David Petraeus and Paula Broadwell, questioning when the retired general popped up in the FBI inquiry, whether national security was compromised and why they weren’t told sooner.
“We received no advanced notice. It was like a lightning bolt,” said Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The FBI was investigating harassing emails sent by David Petraeus biographer and girlfriend Paula Broadwell to a second woman. That probe of Paula Broadwell’s emails revealed the affair between her and David Petraeus. The FBI contacted David Petraeus and other intelligence officials, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper asked Petraeus to resign.
A senior U.S. military official identified the second woman as Jill Kelley, 37, who lives in Tampa, Florida, and serves as a social liaison to the military’s Joint Special Operations Command. The U.S. official said the coalition countries represented at the military’s Central Command in Tampa gave Jill Kelley an appreciation certificate on which she was referred to as an “honorary ambassador” to the coalition, but she has no official status.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the case publicly, said Jill Kelley is known to drop the “honorary” part and refer to herself as an ambassador.
The military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss the investigation, said Jill Kelley had received harassing emails from Paula Broadwell, which led the FBI to examine her email account and eventually discover her relationship with David Petraeus.
A former associate of David Petraeus confirmed the target of the emails was Jill Kelley, but said there was no affair between the two, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the retired general’s private life. The associate, who has been in touch with David Petraeus since his resignation, says Jill Kelley and her husband were longtime friends of Petraeus and wife, Holly.
David Petraeus resigned while lawmakers still had questions about the September 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate and CIA base in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens. Lawmakers said it’s possible that David Petraeus will still be asked to appear on Capitol Hill to testify about what he knew about the U.S. response to that incident.
David Petraeus resigned while lawmakers still had questions about the September 11 attack on the US Consulate and CIA base in Benghazi
Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said the circumstances of the FBI probe smacked of a cover-up by the White House.
“It seems this [the investigation] has been going on for several months and, yet, now it appears that they’re saying that the FBI didn’t realize until Election Day that General Petraeus was involved. It just doesn’t add up,” said Peter King, R-N.Y.
David Petraeus, 60, quit Friday after acknowledging an extramarital relationship. He has been married 38 years to Holly Petraeus, with whom he has two adult children, including a son who led an infantry platoon in Afghanistan as an Army lieutenant.
Paula Broadwell, a 40-year-old graduate of the U.S. Military Academy and an Army Reserve officer, is married with two young sons.
David Petraeus’ affair with Paula Broadwell will be the subject of meetings Wednesday involving congressional intelligence committee leaders, FBI deputy director Sean Joyce and CIA deputy director Michael Morell.
David Petraeus had been scheduled to appear before the committees on Thursday to testify on what the CIA knew and what the agency told the White House before, during and after the attack in Benghazi. Republicans and some Democrats have questioned the U.S. response and protection of diplomats stationed overseas.
Michael Morell was expected to testify in place of David Petraeus, and lawmakers said he should have the answers to their questions. But Dianne Feinstein and others didn’t rule out the possibility that Congress will compel David Petraeus to testify about Benghazi at a later date, even though he’s relinquished his job.
“I don’t see how in the world you can find out what happened in Benghazi before, during and after the attack if General Petraeus doesn’t testify,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
Lindsey Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, wants to create a joint congressional committee to investigate the U.S. response to that attack.
Dianne Feinstein said she first learned of David Petraeus’ affair from the media late last week, and confirmed it in a phone call Friday with Petraeus. She eventually was briefed by the FBI and said so far there was no indication that national security was breached.
Still, Dianne Feinstein called the news “a heartbreak” for her personally and U.S. intelligence operations, and said she didn’t understand why the FBI didn’t give her a heads up as soon as David Petraeus’ name emerged in the investigation.
“We are very much able to keep things in a classified setting,” she said.
“At least if you know, you can begin to think and then to plan. And, of course, we have not had that opportunity.”
Jason Clapper was told by the Justice Department of the Petraeus investigation at about 5 p.m. on Election Day, and then called David Petraeus and urged him to resign, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly.
FBI officials say the committees weren’t informed until Friday, one official said, because the matter started as a criminal investigation into harassing emails sent by Paula Broadwell to another woman.
Concerned that the emails he exchanged with Paula Broadwell raised the possibility of a security breach, the FBI brought the matter up with David Petraeus directly, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss the investigation.
David Petraeus decided to quit, though he was breaking no laws by having an affair, officials said.
Dianne Feinstein said she has not been told the precise relationship between David Petraeus and the woman who reported the harassing emails to the FBI.
Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss, the top Republican on the Senate intelligence committee, called David Petraeus “a great leader” who did right by stepping down and still deserves the nation’s gratitude. He also didn’t rule out calling David Petraeus to testify on Benghazi at some point.
“He’s trying to put his life back together right now and that’s what he needs to focus on,” Saxby Chambliss said.
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