Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
SALT LAKE CITY — President Donald Trump trashed Utah U.S. Attorney John Huber, calling him a “garbage disposal unit” for ending an investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton without charges.
Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions quietly tasked Huber with the investigation in 2018 after two House committees called for a review into whether Department of Justice or FBI employees were biased during their now-closed probe of Clinton’s use of a private email server, and as they began investigating Trump campaign ties to Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
In addition to an investigation into the request for a warrant to surveil Trump campaign aide Carter Page, Huber was looking into whether the DOJ ignored allegations about Clinton’s ties to the sale of U.S. uranium rights to a subsidiary of a Russian nuclear energy company. He was also reportedly investigating Clinton’s use of a personal email server and the dealings of her family’s foundation.
Huber closed the investigation in January.
“Undercover Huber is a great spoof, funny, but at the same time sad, because the real @JohnWHuber did absolutely NOTHING. He was a garbage disposal unit for important documents & then, tap, tap, tap, just drag it along & run out of time. A.G. Jeff Sessions was played like a drum!” Trump tweeted Wednesday.
Trump was referring to a parody account created on Twitter of Huber called “Undercover Huber,” which uses the handle @JohnWHuber. It has nearly 250,000 followers and has posted more than 11,200 tweets. A photo on the account is a picture of Huber with a coronavirus face mask and aviator sunglasses.
Undercover Huber is a great spoof, funny, but at the same time sad, because the real @JohnWHuber did absolutely NOTHING. He was a garbage disposal unit for important documents & then, tap, tap, tap, just drag it along & run out of time. A.G. Jeff Sessions was played like a drum!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 3, 2020
“Be the hammer, not the nail”.*I’m NOT really John Huber* but you can still send tips: undercoverhuber@protonmail.com. “Investigative whiz” — Andy McCarthy,” it says on the account.
Huber declined to comment through the U.S. Attorney’s Office spokeswoman Melodie Rydalch.
An appointee of President Barack Obama, Huber has served as U.S. attorney in Utah since June 2015. Now retired Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, saved his job after Trump asked U.S. attorneys across the country to resign so he could appoint new ones.
Huber was tight-lipped about his investigation. He refused to answer questions about it during an exchange with reporters last year, saying, “There are matters too sensitive to talk about.”
In January 2019, the Republican ranking members of the House Government Oversight Committee and the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Huber seeking an update of his work. They also expressed disappointment that he refused to testify at a subcommittee hearing titled, “Oversight of Nonprofit Organization: A Case Study on the Clinton Foundation.”
Specifically, the lawmakers wanted Huber to provide them with the number of witnesses he had interviewed along with their names and the number remaining to be interviewed. They also wanted to know how many Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or FISA applications as well as the number and nature of documents he reviewed.
