Hillary Clinton looked America in the eye in 2016 and said she had nothing to hide.
Now a federal watchdog just ripped open a file the Justice Department spent seven years refusing to release.
What Judicial Watch just forced out of the bureau raises a question Hillary Clinton has never had to answer.
Judicial Watch FOIA Lawsuit Exposes FBI Wire Fraud Investigation of Tony Rodham
Tony Rodham – the youngest sibling of Hillary Clinton and full-time family fixer – was the target of a wire fraud investigation opened by the FBI’s Miami Field Office in 1996.
The case file carries designation 196D-MM-79121.
In FBI records, “196” is the bureau’s internal code for wire fraud.
Judicial Watch obtained 77 pages of those records through a FOIA lawsuit filed in December 2025 – nearly seven years after the FBI first acknowledged in August 2019 that it possessed more than 13,000 pages of material on Rodham.
The bureau sat on those records through two presidential elections.
The scheme documented in the files reads like something lifted from a bad 1980s crime drama.
Rodham and two associates operated East European Imports Inc. out of Coral Gables, Florida, soliciting auto dealers across the country for a Romanian vehicle importation deal involving the ARO 24 and ARO 10 – small, inexpensive vehicles the company claimed it had rights to import.
It never imported a single vehicle.
FBI records from June 1996 note that Miami investigators had already determined there was “very little likelihood” any ARO vehicle would ever arrive in America through EEI – and that the same principals had run a virtually identical scheme between 1986 and 1987 under the name Roman Motors Corporation.
The FBI’s language on the political sensitivity was unambiguous.
“The investigation has assumed sensitive political aspects,” the records state, “because it has been determined that ANTHONY ‘TONY’ RODHAM, a brother of HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, may have played a role.”
The records do not show charges were ever filed.
“After more than two decades of delay, these FBI records reveal a criminal investigation involving Hillary Clinton’s brother and raise serious questions about what remains hidden in the government’s files not only about Hillary’s brother but Hillary Clinton herself,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
Tony Rodham FBI Investigation Was One of Many Clinton Foundation Corruption Schemes
The 1996 investigation was not Tony Rodham’s only time at the center of a federal inquiry.
During Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State, Rodham and former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe raised at least $46 million through the EB-5 cash-for-visas program for their GreenTech Automotive electric car company.
A Department of Homeland Security Inspector General investigation concluded that then-DHS official Alejandro Mayorkas – the same man Joe Biden later installed as Secretary of Homeland Security – gave Rodham and McAuliffe’s operation “an appearance of favoritism and special access.”
One Immigration and Customs Enforcement official put it more plainly, telling investigators that Mayorkas “absolutely gave special treatment” to GreenTech.
GreenTech filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February 2018.
32 Chinese investors later filed a $17 million lawsuit alleging Rodham and McAuliffe used their political connections to make promises they could not keep.
Tony Rodham ran the same play for thirty years – trade on the Clinton name, collect the fees, let someone else clean up the wreckage.
The FBI knew what it had and chose to sit on it while Hillary Clinton asked the country to make her president.
The FBI Sat on 13000 Pages of Hillary Clinton Records Through Two Presidential Elections
77 pages out of 13,000 is not transparency – it is a receipt.
The Romania wire fraud case was sensitive enough that the bureau flagged it internally for political implications while Bill Clinton occupied the Oval Office – and sensitive enough that the Justice Department stonewalled Judicial Watch for six years after the first request landed.
There are 12,923 pages the public has not seen.
Those pages cover a man who spent three decades using the Clinton name as a pass key – and a federal government that spent those same three decades making sure no one found out.
The FBI knew. They chose silence. Judicial Watch had to sue twice to get seventy-seven pages.
Sources:
- Tom Fitton, “FBI Records Reveal Criminal Fraud Investigation of Hillary Clinton’s Late Brother Tony Rodham,” Judicial Watch, June 26, 2026.
- “Judicial Watch Sues Justice Department for FBI Records on Hillary Clinton’s Brother, Tony Rodham,” Judicial Watch, December 8, 2025.
- Michelle Malkin, “The Green-Card Racket for Beltway Cronies,” Townhall, April 1, 2015.
