Remember Clinton Cash? The book released by Peter Schweizer just as the primary season was heating up in 2015 was summarily debunked and dismissed just after it was published, but someone at the FBI apparently took it seriously.
The FBI reportedly started a currently defunct investigation of the Clinton Foundation after reading Schweizer's fan fiction.
via Media Matters
The FBI in August was considering whether to expand investigations into both Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s “secretive business dealings in Ukraine” and Democratic presidential nominee “Hillary Clinton’s relationships with donors to her family foundation,” but, following longstanding precedent, decided not to proceed for fear of impacting the election, according to The New York Times. The paper further reported that the Clinton Foundation inquiry “had not developed much evidence and was based mostly on information that had surfaced in news stories and the book ‘Clinton Cash,’ according to several law enforcement officials briefed on the case.”
The inquiry probably had not developed much evidence because Schweizer's book was a fabrication.
Clinton Cash was savaged after it was released (including here on this blog) because, among other reasons, it included quotes and sources that don't actually exist.
I've never said this before, but I'm really looking forward to the Senate committee hearings on the FBI's incompetence and rogue decision making process if Democrats retake the Senate.