Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys who played key roles in special counsel Jack Smith’s case against President Donald Trump previously helped shut down an investigation into the Clinton campaign, emails show.
Richard Pilger, at the time in the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, and J.P. Cooney, then working in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, opposed opening a criminal investigation into allegations that the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee “failed to accurately disclose” payments for the Steele Dossier claiming ties between Trump and Russia.
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) fined the Clinton campaign and DNC a total of $113,000 in 2022 for failing to properly report funding of the Steele Dossier.
The DNC and campaign paid $1,024,407.97 to the law firm Perkins Coie during the 2016 presidential election, which the firm directed to Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm that drafted the Steele Dossier. They claimed on FEC filings that all payments were for legal services.
“The FEC has approved campaigns hiring vendors-or in this case, a law firm-and that vendor contracting with third parties to provide services,” Cooney advised in a June 14, 2019, email. “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. Although not typically what we think of as legal services, I think that we would have an exceedingly difficult time proving it was a willfully false report.”
As a result of Pilger and Cooney’s opinions, the FBI decided not to open an investigation in 2019, according to the memo released by Republican Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley.
“Prior to obtaining an informal consultation from DOJ the writer believed it was reasonable to conclude that if the facts presented in the CLC complaint could be verified this matter met the evidentiary threshold for opening an investigation into the allegation that the DNC falsely reported disbursements in violation of FECA, specifically because there was evidence of concealment,” an unclassified FBI Washington Field Office memo states.
Grassley said 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.”
“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,” he said in a statement on Thursday. “I appreciate Attorney General Bondi and FBI Director Patel’s efforts to turn over the information I requested, and I’ll continue investigating this matter.”
Cooney was one of the top prosecutors on Smith’s team, and Pilger helped review and approve the Arctic Frost investigation behind Smith’s case, according to records released by Grassley in January.
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