If you're wondering why Team Hillary panicked and unleashed hell on the FBI, this may be another ingredient in the stew. The Wall Street Journal article is clearly trying to spin things to the left and damage the credibility of the FBI, but it's an interesting data point.
The FBI had secretly recorded conversations of a suspect in a public-corruption case talking about alleged deals the Clintons made, these people said. The agents listening to the recordings couldn’t tell from the conversations if what the suspect was describing was accurate, but it was, they thought, worth checking out.
Prosecutors thought the talk was hearsay and a weak basis to warrant aggressive tactics, like presenting evidence to a grand jury, because the person who was secretly recorded wasn’t inside the Clinton Foundation.
FBI investigators grew increasingly frustrated with resistance from the corruption prosecutors, and some executives at the bureau itself, to keep pursuing the case.
As prosecutors rebuffed their requests to proceed more overtly, those Justice Department officials became more annoyed that the investigators didn’t seem to understand or care about the instructions issued by their own bosses and prosecutors to act discreetly.
In short, FBI people had material for a case that the government didn't want brought because Team Obama were Hillary backers and the senior leadership in the DOJ saw their careers linked to the rise of Hillary. And so a stand down order was handed down.
Following the February meeting, officials at Justice Department headquarters sent a message to all the offices involved to “stand down,’’ a person familiar with the matter said.
This is what happens when the DOJ has been so thoroughly corrupted from the top down.
Meanwhile there's little doubt, considering what we already know, that the DOJ people had been updating Hillary's people on the FBI investigation. Should those emails come out, they will be some of the most damning of all. And so Hillary's people panicked and decided to pull the trigger.