Grassley: DOJ Partisans Killed Probe Into Clinton, DNC

The same Department of Justice partisans who played key roles in the launch and cover of the FBI’s politically driven Arctic Frost investigation killed a criminal probe into the driver of the Russia collusion hoax, according to new emails released Thursday by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley.

The emails, dating back to 2019 at the height of the hoax, expose DOJ players freezing investigative efforts to look into campaign finance violations committed by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee. As became clear over time (no thanks to the accomplice media), the failed 2016 Democrat presidential candidate’s campaign and the DNC pushed opposition research to fuel a deep state soft coup aimed at toppling President Donald Trump’s first term in office. 

In 2022, the Federal Election Commission fined the Clinton campaign and the DNC for “misreporting” (disguising) campaign funds paid to Fusion GPS to deliver the infamous Steele dossier that falsely and maliciously accused the Trump campaign of colluding with the Kremlin. 

“Courageous whistleblowers came to my office years ago to sound the alarm that the Justice Department inappropriately interfered in efforts to investigate potential criminal activity committed by Hillary Clinton and her campaign,” Grassley, R-Iowa, said in a press release.

“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 added.

‘Chilling Effect’

The FEC fined Clinton’s 2016 campaign and the DNC a combined $113,000 years after complaints from the Campaign Legal Center and the Coolidge Reagan Foundation raised concerns about cash distributions to Democrat Party law firm Perkins Coie. The payments were noted as “legal advice and services,” but they ultimately went to pay for the lie-filled dossier. 

FBI and other intelligence agencies used British spy Christopher Steele’s dossier as a predicate for the Russia collusion hoax aimed at toppling a duly elected president and making life a living hell for Trump allies. 

As CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times and other corporate media outlets hungrily — and erroneously — covered every morsel of the bogus Russia-Trump story, Richard Pilger, top election crimes prosecutor in the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, and J.P. Cooney, who then worked in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, were throwing cold water on a request to investigate.

Interestingly, Pilger was later intricately involved in reviewing and approving the opening of the Arctic Frost investigation that special prosecutor Jack Smith used to go after Trump, while Cooney served as the partisan prosecutor’s deputy special counsel for the Biden Department of Justice’s political vendetta against Trump on dubious allegations that the then-former president attempted to overturn Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory. 

In email exchanges spanning more than two weeks in 2019, an unnamed FBI agent attempted to sell the DOJ officials on opening an investigation into suspect campaign finance reports from the Clinton campaign and the DNC. It appeared to be an “unambiguous concealment,” wrote the agent, whose name is redacted in the emails. 

At every turn, Pilger and Cooney shrugged off the agent’s arguments. 

“I do not, however, think this is a good candidate to open for a false reporting case,” Cooney wrote in an email, dated June 14. He seemed to jump to a judgment, referencing Marc Elias, Perkins Coie’s Democrat political “fixer” at the time, who has gone on to be the left’s go-to lawfare attorney.  

“Although I have not looked at the FEC report, any money paid to Fusion GPS for the dossier through PC was probably reported as legal services or something like that. … I think that we would have an exceedingly difficult time proving it was a willfully false report. This is particularly so given that Elias, when questioned, disclosed the existence of the PC-Fusion GPS contract,” Cooney wrote in popping the agent’s balloon. 

The FBI agent later wrote that the debate eventually devolved into veiled threats. 

“Rich[ard] [Pilger] has finally acknowledged my questions, his answers usually contain some veiled threat I believe is intended to have a chilling [effect] and stop me from asking questions. … I have never been met with such suspicion or responses intended to have me go away,” the frustrated agent wrote. 

‘The Most Dangerous Man in the Federal Government’

In a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel, Grassley asserts the communications “raise serious questions about Pilger and Cooney’s decision-making.” The Judiciary Committee chairman said this “is not the first time” his investigation has cast “light on Pilger’s work.”

“On October 7, 2021, as Ranking Member of this Committee, I released a Staff Report of which Section VI in that report is about Pilger and his efforts to undermine the DOJ’s election related efforts during 2020,” he wrote. 

Pilger left his voting crimes leadership position in a huff following the 2020 election, ticked off that then-Attorney General Bill Barr had authorized U.S. attorneys to look into election fraud allegations. He took a demotion, a “nonsupervisory role working on corruption prosecutions,” before he ultimately helped move the corrupt Arctic Frost investigation along. He left the government for private practice in 2022. Pilger was also tied to the Obama-era IRS scandal involving the political targeting of conservative nonprofits, working with disgraced Exempt Organizations Unit director Lois Lerner. 

In 2015, campaign finance attorney Paul H. Jossey wrote in The Federalist that Pilger may be “the most dangerous man in the federal government that no one has ever heard of.”

“Pilger heads the DOJ’s Election Crimes Branch and was intimately involved in the initial DOJ interest in political-speech crimes in 2010,” Jossey asserted in his column. “According to the Wall Street Journal, Pilger is now strenuously lobbying the DOJ to criminally police political speech — just in time for the presidential election. In practical effect, this means any left-wing agitprop group that fundraises off publicizing its political complaints and letters may have a willing partner in the federal government’s criminal prosecution arm.”

Cooney was fired after Trump began his second term. He opened a law firm last month with fellow Jack Smith comrade Molly Gaston. The firm will “represent the targets of criminal and congressional investigations” as the administration and the Republican-controlled Congress move to hold accountable Biden and deep state players who weaponized the Justice Department against their political enemies. 

Grassley is now seeking from the DOJ and the FBI all (unredacted) records involving “DNC and Fusion GPS FEC violations” and all related communications to, from, or copying Pilger, Cooney, and/or AnnaLou Tirol, former acting chief of the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section. 

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.