Senate Examining Prior DOJ Effort To Shut Down Probe Into Hillary’s Anti Trump Dossier
The Senate Judiciary Committee is examining whether the Justice Department improperly moved to shut down an inquiry into the Clinton campaign’s funding of the Steele dossier.
Committee Chairman Sen. Charles E. Grassley said a whistleblower has alleged that two senior officials involved in the Justice Department’s Arctic Frost investigation of President Trump previously played key roles in blocking an FBI probe into Hillary Clinton and other Democrats, the Washington Times reported on Friday.
Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, released email exchanges from June 2019 between an unidentified FBI agent and Richard Pilger, then an official in the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, along with J.P. Cooney, who at the time served as a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.
The emails show Pilger and Cooney rejecting the agent’s questions regarding what the agent described as the “unambiguous concealment” of payments made by the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign to fund the Steele dossier, compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.
The DNC and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign hired the research firm Fusion GPS to help produce the dossier, which contained unverified allegations about then-GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and saddle him with a phony scandal linking him to Russia. The payments were reported as legal expenses, obscuring the political nature of the project.
In a message to a supervisor, the FBI agent said Pilger made obvious threats that the agent said were “intended to have a chilling effect and stop me from asking questions” about the Clinton and DNC funding, the Times reported.
“In my [redacted] years of being an agent, a successful agent with a great reputation, I have never been met with such suspicion or response intended to have me go away,” the FBI agent noted.
Pilger, who served as director of the Justice Department’s Election Crimes Branch, later played a significant role in authorizing the Arctic Frost investigation into former President Trump’s conduct following the 2020 election. That probe, led by then-Special Counsel Jack Smith, resulted in Trump being indicted on election-interference charges.
Cooney served as Smith’s deputy during the investigation, the Times reported.
In a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel, Sen. Grassley requested additional records and emails related to the FBI’s earlier inquiry into the DNC and Clinton campaign payments to Fusion GPS, which he said appeared to have been halted by Justice Department officials.
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 wrote.
In a June 21, 2019, email, Pilger criticized an FBI agent for seeking to open an investigation into whether payments had been concealed, accusing the agent of showing “bias” and acting with “a rush to judgment.” A week earlier, on June 14, Cooney had advised the same agent that the issue “is not a good candidate to open for a false reporting case,” noting that Fusion GPS had been retained by the Clinton campaign’s law firm, Perkins Coie, rather than by the campaign itself.
“Although not typically what we think of as legal services, I think we would have an exceedingly difficult time proving it was a willfully false report,” Cooney said in a note to the agent, the Times reported.
The dossier — later discredited as a collection of unverified claims — alleged improper ties between Trump and Russia. The document circulated ahead of the 2016 presidential election and was subsequently cited by the FBI, then led by Director James Comey, to support the opening of a secret investigation into the Trump campaign.
The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee were not criminally investigated over the underlying payments but instead faced civil penalties after watchdog groups filed complaints with the Federal Election Commission, said the Times.
In 2022, the FEC fined the Clinton campaign $8,000 and the DNC $105,000 for misreporting more than $1 million in payments to the law firm Perkins Coie, which used the funds to hire Fusion GPS.
ll.Hegseth Fires Top Military Intel Officer Over Iran Leak
The director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) was dismissed Friday, weeks after the agency prepared a preliminary bomb-damage assessment — later leaked to the media — that indicated U.S. strikes on Iran had delayed the country’s nuclear program by only a few months.
Air Force Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, who had led the DIA since February 2024, “will no longer serve as DIA director,” a senior defense official told The Post.
Deputy Director Christine Bordine is now listed as acting director on the agency’s official website.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly fired Kruse over a “a loss of confidence” in the lieutenant general, two congressional officials told the New York Times.
The DIA’s classified, “low confidence” assessment of the June 21 airstrikes on Iran’s Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz nuclear sites was leaked to CNN three days after U.S. B-2 stealth bombers and cruise missiles targeted the facilities.An official said the assessment was based on limited intelligence collected the day after the strike. The document reportedly concluded that Iran could restore elements of its nuclear program within one to two months and that its stockpile of enriched uranium had not been destroyed in the airstrikes.
The leak drew sharp anger from President Donald Trump and other senior administration officials. In a Truth Social post, Trump described the leak as “AN ATTEMPT TO DEMEAN ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MILITARY STRIKES IN HISTORY.” He added in all caps: “THE NUCLEAR SITES IN IRAN ARE COMPLETELY DESTROYED!”
Special envoy Steve Witkoff dismissed claims that the United States failed to achieve its military objectives in Iran, calling such suggestions “completely preposterous” during an interview on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle.
He also condemned the leak of the DIA assessment, describing it as “outrageous” and “treasonous,” and urged an investigation to identify and hold accountable those responsible, the New York Post added.
Kruse’s dismissal marks the latest shake-up within the intelligence community under the Trump administration.
In April, former National Security Agency Director Timothy Haugh was removed from his post on the same day that at least three National Security Council staff members were also dismissed.
A Defense Department spokesman lashed out Wednesday at a Washington Post investigation into Secretary Pete Hegseth’s security detail, accusing the newspaper of endangering the Cabinet member and his family.
“WaPo intentionally published sensitive details of @SecDef’s security detail for him and his family – putting their safety at risk,” Joel Valdez, the acting deputy press secretary for the Department of Defense, said on X. “There should be severe punishment for what @TaraCopp, @DanLamothe, and @AlexHortonTX are doing.”
The Post story, headlined “Hegseth’s expansive security requirements tax Army protective unit,” was published Wednesday morning and was allegedly based on more than a dozen interviews. Reporters Tara Copp, Alex Horton, and Dan Lamothe detailed how Hegseth’s “unusually large” protective demands are straining the Army agency charged with safeguarding him, forcing agents to be pulled from criminal cases to cover his residences in Minnesota, Tennessee, and Washington, D.C.
“I’ve never seen this many security teams for one guy. Nobody has,” one Pentagon source said, according to the paper.
The story drew sharp criticism from Hegseth’s chief spokesperson, Sean Parnell, who said the report ignored the volatile threat environment.
“In the wake of two assassination attempts against President Trump, ICE agents facing a 1000% increase in assaults, and repeated threats of retaliation from Iran for striking their nuclear capabilities, it’s astonishing that the Washington Post is criticizing a high-ranking Cabinet official for receiving appropriate security protection, especially after doxxing the DHS Secretary last week,” Parnell said.
“Any action pertaining to the security of Secretary Hegseth and his family has been in response to the threat environment and at the full recommendation of the Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID),” he added.
