House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan is skeptical of FBI election interference in the upcoming presidential contest after a report from Special Counsel John Durham eviscerated the agency’s effort to undermine voters in 2016.
On Thursday, Jordan sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland demanding details about the extent of FBI involvement in a special counsel probe run by U.S. Attorney Jack Smith. In November, Smith was appointed special counsel to investigate whether former President Donald Trump violated federal laws related to the handling of presidential records. The appointment came after an FBI raid of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in which 30 plainclothes agents confiscated 15 boxes of material at Garland’s personal direction.
“The extent of the FBI’s bias and reckless disregard for truth, which Special Counsel John Durham laid out in painstaking detail, is nothing short of scandalous,” Jordan wrote Thursday.
Durham’s report found that “neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion” to implicate Trump nor any members of his campaign as Russian agents, yet the FBI launched Crossfire Hurricane and peddled the Russia-collusion hoax for years.
“The FBI has tried to dismiss the report’s findings by claiming to have ‘already implemented dozens of corrective actions’ to prevent similar misconduct in the future,” Jordan said. “The FBI’s window dressing is not enough.”
FBI misconduct continued in 2020 with a censorship operation wherein the agency co-opted Silicon Valley tech giants to suppress incriminating stories about the Biden family.
Jordan is now conducting congressional oversight with a request that the DOJ disclose how many FBI agents are working under Smith on his investigation and what kind of resources the FBI has dedicated to the effort. The Judiciary chair gave the Justice Department two weeks to respond; the deadline is June 15.
Jordan also demanded a congressional briefing from Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco related to Durham’s findings.
On Wednesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray faced threats of contempt charges by Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley and Kentucky Rep. James Comer, who chairs the House Oversight Committee. The top lawmakers began contempt proceedings after the FBI chief refused to hand over an unclassified document allegedly containing evidence of an illegal scheme involving President Joe Biden and a “foreign national.”
“While Director Wray — after a month of refusing to even acknowledge that the form existed — has offered to allow us to see the documents in person at FBI headquarters, we have been clear that anything short of producing these documents to the House Oversight Committee is not in compliance with the subpoena,” Comer said Wednesday.
2023-06-01 JDJ to Garland R… by The Federalist
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