RL Senate Committee Investigates Allegations of DOJ Interference in Clinton Campaign & Dossier Funding Probe – News

Senate Inquiry Examines Whistleblower Claims of DOJ Obstructing Probe into Clinton Campaign’s Dossier Funding

WASHINGTON – The Senate Judiciary Committee has opened a new inquiry into allegations that senior officials at the Department of Justice improperly intervened to shut down an FBI investigation concerning the funding of the controversial Steele dossier during the 2016 presidential election cycle. Citing information from a whistleblower, Committee Chairman Senator Charles E. Grassley (R-IA) is scrutinizing the actions of two former DOJ officials who later held prominent roles in the investigation of former President Donald Trump.

The focus of the inquiry rests on allegations that a potential criminal probe into the financing of the dossier by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) was prematurely halted. According to Sen. Grassley, a whistleblower has come forward with evidence suggesting that two senior officials, Richard Pilger and J.P. Cooney, were instrumental in blocking the FBI’s efforts to investigate the matter in 2019.

The dossier, a collection of unverified and later discredited memos compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, contained salacious allegations about Donald Trump’s connections to Russia. Its creation was financed by the Clinton campaign and the DNC through the law firm Perkins Coie, which in turn hired the research firm Fusion GPS. The payments, totaling over $1 million, were categorized as legal expenses, a move that obscured their purpose as funding for political opposition research.

Sen. Grassley released email exchanges from June 2019 that appear to corroborate the whistleblower’s claims. The correspondence is between an unidentified FBI agent and the two DOJ officials in question: Richard Pilger, who was then the director of the DOJ’s Election Crimes Branch, and J.P. Cooney, who served at the time as a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.

In the emails, the FBI agent raises concerns about the “unambiguous concealment” of the dossier payments and expresses a desire to open a formal inquiry. However, both Pilger and Cooney appear to reject the agent’s line of questioning. Cooney advised the agent on June 14, 2019, that the matter was not a “good candidate to open for a false reporting case.” His reasoning was that because the law firm Perkins Coie, not the campaign directly, had retained Fusion GPS, it would be difficult to prove willful wrongdoing. “Although not typically what we think of as legal services, I think we would have an exceedingly difficult time proving it was a willfully false report,” Cooney wrote.

A week later, on June 21, 2019, Pilger responded more forcefully to the agent’s persistence, accusing the agent of showing “bias” and a “rush to judgment.” The FBI agent documented their reaction in a message to a supervisor, expressing dismay at the response. “In my [redacted] years of being an agent, a successful agent with a great reputation, I have never been met with such suspicion or response intended to have me go away,” the agent wrote, adding that Pilger made obvious threats that were “intended to have a chilling effect and stop me from asking questions.”

The issue has gained renewed attention due to the subsequent roles Pilger and Cooney played in the “Arctic Frost” investigation, a DOJ probe into former President Trump’s actions surrounding the 2020 election. That investigation was led by then-Special Counsel Jack Smith, and both Pilger and Cooney were involved; Cooney served as Smith’s deputy. This connection has led Sen. Grassley to question the motives behind their earlier actions.

In a formal letter addressed to Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel, Sen. Grassley requested all records and communications related to the FBI’s initial inquiry into the DNC and Clinton campaign payments. “These records show the same partisans who rushed to cover for Clinton rabidly pursued Arctic Frost, which was a runaway train aimed directly at President Trump and the Republican political apparatus,” Grassley asserted in his letter.

While a criminal investigation by the DOJ never materialized from the payment issue, the Clinton campaign and the DNC did face civil repercussions. Following complaints filed by watchdog groups with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), an investigation was launched. In 2022, the FEC concluded its review and issued fines, penalizing the Clinton campaign $8,000 and the DNC $105,000 for misreporting the purpose of the payments to Perkins Coie.

The Steele dossier itself played a significant part in the political turmoil of the 2016 election and its aftermath. It was circulated among journalists and government officials and was cited by the FBI, then under Director James Comey, as part of the justification to open a secret counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign, codenamed “Crossfire Hurricane.” The contents of the dossier have since been largely debunked or remain unverified.

Senator Grassley’s new effort aims to uncover whether the decision to forego a criminal investigation into the dossier’s funding was a standard prosecutorial judgment or the result of improper influence by officials who, according to the whistleblower’s allegations, may have been politically motivated. The request for additional documentation signals a new chapter in the long-running controversy, placing the DOJ’s internal conduct from 2019 under a congressional microscope.