Newly released emails reveal that key attorneys now prosecuting President Donald Trump in the special counsel’s case previously worked to shut down a criminal investigation into the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) over funding for the infamous Steele Dossier.
The documents, released by Republican Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley, raise serious questions about perceived partisanship within the Department of Justice (DOJ).
The Clinton Dossier Cover-Up
The attorneys in question are Richard Pilger, who was in the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, and J.P. Cooney, then with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. Both men are now linked to special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Trump. Cooney was a top prosecutor on Smith’s team, while Pilger helped approve the “Arctic Frost” investigation that underpins the current case.
In 2019, Pilger and Cooney advised against opening a criminal investigation into allegations that the Clinton campaign and DNC “failed to accurately disclose” over $1 million in payments made through the law firm Perkins Coie to Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that produced the anti-Trump Steele Dossier.
While the Federal Election Commission (FEC) fined the campaign and DNC $113,000 in 2022 for the reporting failures—payments were labeled as “legal services”—Cooney argued in a June 2019 email that proving a “willfully false report” would be “exceedingly difficult.”
FBI Felt Evidence Was There
The result of the DOJ lawyers’ opinions was the FBI deciding not to open an investigation. However, an unclassified FBI memo from the Washington Field Office stated the writer “believed it was reasonable to conclude” that if the facts were verified, the matter “met the evidentiary threshold for opening an investigation.”
Senator Grassley blasted the revelations, stating that the 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.”
This explosive finding fuels accusations that some DOJ officials have applied a “double standard”—allegedly hindering a probe into Democrats while aggressively pursuing a case against a political rival.
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