This may answer some questions to those scratching their heads over then FBI director Jim Comey’s actions (or non-actions) regarding Hillary Clinton’s emails.

In 2004, Comey, then serving as a deputy attorney general in the Justice Department, apparently limited the scope of the criminal investigation of Sandy Berger.

This conveniently left out former Clinton administration officials who may have coordinated with Berger in his removal and destruction of classified records from the National Archives.

The documents were relevant to accusations that the Clinton administration was negligent in the build-up to the 9/11 terrorist attack.

Inspector General Paul Brachfeld reported that when Berger was confronted by Archives officials about the missing documents, he said it was possible he threw them in his office trash.

The report said that when Archives employees first suspected that Berger – who had been President Clinton’s national security adviser – was removing classified documents from the Archives in the fall of 2003, they failed to notify any law enforcement agency.

Curiously, Berger, Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Cheryl Mills all worked as partners in the Washington law firm Hogan & Hartson, which prepared tax returns for the Clintons and did patent work for a software firm that played a role in the private email server Hillary Clinton used when she was secretary of state.

Lynch and Comey both served as U.S. attorneys in New York, Lynch for the Eastern District of New York, and Comey for the Southern District of New York. They crossed paths in the investigation of HSBC bank, which avoided criminal charges in a massive money-laundering scandal for which the bank paid a $1.9 billion fine.

After Attorney General John Aschroft recused himself in the Valerie Plame affair in 2004, Comey appointed as special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who ended up convicting “Scooter” Libby, a top aide to then Vice President Dick Cheney, of perjury and obstruction of justice.

The charge was based on the accusations of Plame and her former ambassador husband, Joe Wilson – both partisan supporters of Bill and Hillary Clinton – that Libby outed her as a CIA agent.

New York Times reporter Judith Miller’s 2015 memoir strongly suggests Fitzgerald improperly manipulated testimony and withheld crucial evidence in obtaining a conviction against Scooter Libby in his 2007 obstruction of justice trial.

As deputy attorney general, Comey was involved in the investigation of Berger, as Fox News reported in 2004.

Berger was given the name “Socks,” by people in the know because of how he used his socks to hide documents he was stealing from the National Archives.

Berger at that time was under criminal investigation by the Justice Department for removing from the National Archives various classified documents that should have been turned over to the independent commission investigating the 9/11 terror attacks and for removing handwritten notes he made while reviewing the documents.

The New York Times reported in 2005 that Republican leaders speculated Berger removed the documents from the National Archives because he was trying to conceal material that could be damaging to the Clinton administration.

There is no evidence Comey’s investigation for the Justice Department made any attempt to determine if anyone affiliated with the Clinton White House prompted Berger or coordinated with him in the decision to remove the classified documents.

Various statements Comey made about Berger’s mishandling of classified documents bear comparison to his comments regarding Hillary Clinton’s email server.

In 2004, Fox News noted Comey told reporters he could not comment on the Berger investigation but did address the general issue of mishandling classified documents.

“As a general matter, we take issues of classified information very seriously,” Comey said in response to a reporter’s question.

He added that the department had prosecuted and sought administrative sanctions against people for mishandling classified information.

“It’s our lifeblood, those secrets,” Comey continued. “It’s against the law for anyone to intentionally mishandle classified documents either by taking it to give to somebody else or by mishandling it in a way that is outside the government regulations.”

On April 1, 2005, Berger pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of intentionally removing documents from the National Archives and destroying some of them. He was fined $50,000, sentenced to 100 hours of community service and two years probation. Also, his national security license was stripped for two years.

Messages found stored on Clinton’s private email server show that Berger – a convicted thief of classified documents – had been advising Clinton while she served as secretary of state and had access to emails containing classified information.

Berger died rather mysteriously about a year after this.

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