The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been hiding the truth from Congress and the public, and they’ve just been caught. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley on Friday called for an investigation of the internal tools the G-men have been using to conceal their official actions from legitimate oversight.
Material released by the Iowa Republican senator confirms the existence of a secretive electronic file drawer within Sentinel, the FBI’s case management system, allowing the bureau to reply, “We have no responsive documents” when a congressional committee subpoenas information locked within.
The issue came to light in a recently declassified 2019 memo from an agent on the public corruption team asking then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller to release a set of covert files related to Nellie Ohr, a key player in the plot to frame then-candidate Donald Trump as a Russian asset.
“[R]elevant FBI/DOJ information related to this assessment was inaccessible to FBI investigators given that the Trump/Russia-collusion investigations were in FBI systems under ‘Prohibited Access’ status which, unlike ‘Restricted Access’ status, precludes investigators from detecting the existence of potentially relevant serials,” the FBI memo explains.
House Oversight Committee Republicans had sent a criminal referral that accused Mrs. Ohr of lying to Congress when she feigned ignorance of the Justice Department’s collusion investigation. The public corruption team had to come up with a response to the lawmakers.
Mrs. Ohr worked for Fusion GPS, the outfit Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign hired to orchestrate a dirty-tricks operation against Mr. Trump. As the wife of Bruce Ohr, one of the DOJ’s most senior officials, she had privileged access to what was going on.
Emails between the Ohrs did discuss the GOP candidate who went on to become the 45th president. According to the FBI memo, Mrs. Ohr also contributed to the creation of the mendacious Steele Dossier, and she regularly fed her husband with tidbits from that collection of lies.
The formerly classified analysis outlined evidence showing Mrs. Ohr was telling a fib when she denied involvement. “Initial investigation of the allegations contained in the criminal referral established the fact that Nellie Ohr provided demonstrably false information in two aspects of her testimony and that she may have provided false testimony in other regards,” the unidentified FBI investigator wrote.
That investigator had been conducting “basic due diligence” before rendering a final verdict on the criminality of Mrs. Ohr’s behavior, and he needed Mr. Mueller’s cooperation. The special counsel’s office didn’t go out of its way to assist.
Andrew Weissmann, one of Mr. Mueller’s deputies, was even caught deleting all the data on his FBI phone to prevent review of his work-related conversations. “It appears that Special Counsel Mueller’s team may have deleted federal records that could be key to better understanding their decision-making process as they pursued their partisan investigation and wrote their report,” Mr. Grassley wrote in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi.
The senator is now seeking for all records in the system that may be flagged as “Prohibited Status” related to Mr. Weissman and other players on the special counsel’s team.
Nobody involved in the FBI’s effort to interfere in the 2016 election and sabotage Mr. Trump’s first presidential term has been held accountable because the gimmicks the FBI used to cloak its misdeeds worked.
Now that these methods are known, the administration should ensure the actions of rogue agents are exposed to the light of history.
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