The Senate Judiciary Committee is reviewing whether the Justice Department may have improperly limited an inquiry into the funding of the Steele dossier, which was compiled during the 2016 presidential campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Committee Chairman Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) cited a whistleblower who alleged that two senior Justice Department officials, previously involved in the Arctic Frost investigation into former President Donald Trump, played key roles in halting an FBI inquiry into payments made by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Clinton campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Continue reading on next page\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Grassley released emails from June 2019 involving an unidentified FBI agent and two DOJ officials, Richard Pilger, then of the Public Integrity Section, and J.P. Cooney, a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office for the District of Columbia. The emails reportedly show Pilger and Cooney rejecting the agent\u2019s questions regarding payments used to fund research for the Steele dossier, which was prepared by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Steele dossier contained unverified allegations about then-GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and potential links to Russia. The DNC and Clinton campaign retained the research firm Fusion GPS to compile the dossier, and the payments were reported as legal expenses at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the whistleblower, the FBI agent raised concerns that Pilger\u2019s communications were intended to discourage further questioning about the funding. In a note to a supervisor, the agent stated that they had never experienced such a response in their career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pilger later served as director of the Justice Department\u2019s Election Crimes Branch and played a role in the Arctic Frost investigation following the 2020 election. Cooney acted as deputy to Special Counsel Jack Smith during that investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sen. Grassley has requested additional records and emails from Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel related to the earlier inquiry into DNC and Clinton campaign payments to Fusion GPS. He argued that these materials could shed light on whether Justice Department officials influenced the decision to limit the investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the released emails, Pilger reportedly criticized the agent for bias and \u201ca rush to judgment,\u201d while Cooney noted that proving a false reporting case would be difficult given that Fusion GPS was retained through the campaign\u2019s law firm rather than the campaign itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Steele dossier, which was circulated prior to the 2016 election, was later discredited as containing unverified claims. While the DNC and Clinton campaign were not criminally investigated for the underlying payments, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) later imposed civil fines: $105,000 on the DNC and $8,000 on the Clinton campaign for reporting errors related to more than $1 million in payments to Perkins Coie, the law firm that hired Fusion GPS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Senate\u2019s review of these events aims to clarify how Justice Department officials handled inquiries related to campaign-related funding and to assess whether procedures were followed appropriately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Senate Judiciary Committee is reviewing whether the Justice Department may have improperly limited an inquiry into the funding of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":9162,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tbdig.com\/sirbenet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tbdig.com\/sirbenet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tbdig.com\/sirbenet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tbdig.com\/sirbenet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tbdig.com\/sirbenet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9161"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tbdig.com\/sirbenet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9163,"href":"https:\/\/tbdig.com\/sirbenet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9161\/revisions\/9163"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tbdig.com\/sirbenet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tbdig.com\/sirbenet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tbdig.com\/sirbenet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tbdig.com\/sirbenet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}