Senate Republicans Are Taking Action To Expose The FBI Investigation Into Trump’s 2016 Campaign

Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IO) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) wrote a letter on Tuesday to Department of Justice Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz that called on Horowitz to provide them with the full unredacted version of the FBI investigation into Donald Trump’s successful 2016 campaign. The letter noted that “Citizens United recently obtained and released 460 pages of heavily redacted records it received in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request…Due to massive redactions applied to the interview transcripts by a number of agencies, including the DOJ OIG, these records are impossible to review. We write to request the unredacted version of those records.”

It further read that “Notably, the DOJ OIG report contained FBI official Bill Priestap’s statement that the FBI ‘didn’t have any indication whatsoever’ of Russian influence of the anti-Trump report known as the Steele dossier [which accused the president of being a Russian agent or at least in collusion with Russia]. Our investigation uncovered redacted footnotes contained in the DOJ OIG’s FISA report that completely contradicted that statement.”

This apparent revelation that the Steele dossier itself was a product of Russian disinformation is rather stunning. A revelation evidentially was first pontificated back in a 2020 joint press statement by Senators Grassley and Johnson. In that press release, it says “The ‘central and essential’ evidence used to justify invasive surveillance of an American citizen in the FBI’s probe into Russian interference was, itself, an example of Russian interference, according to once-secret footnotes declassified at the urging of two U.S. Senators…The footnotes reveal that, beginning early on and continuing throughout the FBI’s Russia investigation, FBI officials learned critical information streams that flowed to the dossier were likely tainted with Russian Intelligence disinformation.”

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It added that despite this warning sign “the FBI aggressively advanced the probe anyway, ignoring internal oversight mechanisms and neglecting to flag the material credibility concerns for a secret court.”

The letter to Horowitz explained that “The records contained in the DOJ OIG’s February 3, 2023, FOIA production to Citizens United directly relate to our ongoing efforts to expose corruption within the FBI. It is also our job to oversee OIGs to ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of operations. Therefore, we respectfully request that you produce the unredacted version of those records and provide the following information by no later than May 9, 2023.”

The senators sought, in particular, transcribed interviews and notes by agents involved in the investigation, shared records between the FBI and other agencies, explanations for any un-transcribed interviews and a list of those, and requested records or transcripts by Special Counsel John Durham into this matter.