The top Republican on the House Oversight Committee demanded answers from FBI Director Christopher Wray about the bureau’s handling of its case against retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn as part of the Russia investigation.
Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, a staunch defender of President Trump, sent a letter Monday with Mike Johnson of Louisiana, the top Republican on the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, to [FBI director] Wray, who took over the bureau after James Comey was fired in 2017.
“We write to request that you immediately review the actions of the FBI in targeting LTG Flynn,” the congressmen said. “The American people continue to learn troubling details about the politicization and misconduct at the highest levels of the FBI during the Obama-Biden Administration."
FBI records released Thursday have been touted by Flynn's lawyer, Sidney Powell, as exculpatory evidence heretofore concealed from the defense team. They suggest that now-fired FBI agent Peter Strzok and others in the FBI’s leadership stopped the bureau from closing its investigation into Flynn in early January 2017 after investigators had uncovered “no derogatory information” on him [i.e., no facts to support the allegations against Flynn to warrant further FBI investigation]. Emails from later that month show Strzok, along with then-FBI lawyer Lisa Page and several others, sought out ways to continue investigating Flynn [i.e., ways to prolong the investigation, as a political weapon against the Trump presidential administration].
Jordan and Johnson said what they found “even more concerning” was that “we continue to learn these new details from litigation and investigations — not from you. It is well past time that you show the leadership necessary to bring the FBI past the abuses of the Obama-Biden era.”
The congressmen claimed new revelations about the FBI’s interactions with Flynn “make it clear that the FBI’s wrongdoing is worse than previously known” and “suggest a pattern of misconduct and politicization at the highest levels of the Obama-Biden-era FBI.”
Flynn, 61, is fighting to dismiss the government's case against him. He pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to investigators about his conversations with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak about sanctions on Russia and a United Nations resolution on Israel. Flynn's contacts with Kislyak were swept up in U.S. surveillance reports, after which Strzok and another agent, believed to be Joseph Pientka, grilled him on the contents of the conversation on Jan. 24, 2017.
The congressman argued newly revealed documents show “the FBI had apparently sought to set a perjury trap for LTG Flynn during an interview on January 24, 2017.”
Flynn told the court earlier this year that he was “innocent of this crime” of lying to federal agents. He filed to withdraw his guilty plea after the Justice Department asked the judge to sentence him to up to six months in prison — though afterward, the department said probation would also be appropriate. [Flynn's attorney, Sidney] Powell is pressing for the dismissal of his case by arguing that the FBI unfairly treated Flynn.
“The FBI’s mission is to do justice dispassionately. But these documents suggest that the FBI ignored protocol to confront LTG Flynn about a potential violation of an obscure and rarely charged offense, with the real goal of forcing LTG Flynn’s resignation or prosecution,” Jordan and Johnson said.
Comey admitted he took advantage of the chaos in the early days of Trump's administration when he sent agent Strzok and another FBI agent to talk to Flynn. Records released Wednesday included handwritten notes from former FBI Assistant Director of the Counterintelligence Division Bill Priestap on the day the FBI interviewed Flynn:
“I agreed yesterday that we shouldn’t show Flynn [REDACTED] if he didn’t admit,” but, “I thought about it last night and I believe we should rethink this,” Priestap wrote. “What is our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?”
The congressmen asked Wray to make Priestap and Pientka available for interviews and pressed the bureau chief to hand over all documents and communications related to “Crossfire Razor” — the code name for the Flynn investigation. They also asked for all records relating to Flynn’s discussions with Russia’s envoy.
Jordan and Johnson gave Wray two weeks to disclose when he “personally first learned of the FBI’s misconduct with respect to LTG Flynn” and to “explain why the Committee and the American public are learning of the FBI’s misconduct with respect to LTG Flynn from court filings rather than from you.”
They asked Wray to say whether he or any other FBI leader “prevented or delayed the disclosure of additional exculpatory information to LTG Flynn and his legal team.”
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report released late last year criticized the Justice Department and the FBI for at least 17 “significant errors and omissions” related to the surveillance warrants against Trump campaign associate Carter Page in 2016 and 2017, and for the bureau's reliance on British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s unverified dossier. Declassified footnotes show the FBI was aware that Russian disinformation may have compromised the dossier.
Wray testified in February there had been at least some illegal surveillance and said he was working to “claw back” that information. Wray said every member of the FBI mentioned in Horowitz’s report had been referred for a disciplinary review, and "the failures highlighted in that report are unacceptable — period."
In a filing earlier this year, [Flynn attorney Sidney Powell] pointed to a section of Horowitz’s report, which showed the intelligence briefing Pientka gave to then-candidate Trump’s team in August 2016 was a “pretext” to gather evidence to help in the counterintelligence investigation into Trump’s campaign.
Powell told Breitbart this weekend, “the government has advised that we will be getting more documents, including more text messages between FBI people." Referring to FBI leadership's actions, she said, "I am pretty sure there are at least offenses such as obstruction of justice," as well as false statements and perjury before Congress.
On Monday, Robert Kelner and Stephen Anthony, Flynn’s former defense lawyers at Covington and Burling LLP, told the court they “identified 32 additional pages of handwritten notes” that should have been turned over to Flynn’s new team last summer.
U.S. Attorney John Durham, picked by Attorney General William Barr to review the Russia investigation, is reportedly scrutinizing the Flynn case.
[ Rep Jordan's full letter displayed. ]
