How The FBI Will Stall Your Crime Investigation If Obama Tells Them To

Five weeks ago, House Speaker Paul Ryan accused the DOJ and FBI of “stonewalling” the House Intelligence Committee’s wide-ranging subpoena for all pertinent information about how the largely unsubstantiated “Trump dossier” played into the DOJ’s decision to launch the infamous Trump collusion investigation. At the time, the speaker said the agency was preparing to turn over the information requested by the committee, but despite his assurances, the promised documents never materialized.

Then yesterday, thanks to a series of coordinated media leaks, Nunes learned – at the same time as the broader public - about the reassignment of Peter Strzok, a senior Mueller aide who had played a critical role in the DOJ’s original collusion investigation. And before that, Strzok helped lead the FBI’s probe into Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information.

As it turns out, the agent had been reassigned for expressing anti-Trump sentiments in a series of text messages to FBI attorney Lisa Page while the two were having an affair. The bureau, it appears, had willfully tried to conceal this fact from Nunes and his committee.

Upon being blindsided with this information and publicly embarassed, the Intel committee chairman was understandably less than pleased. So in a statement issued Sunday, Nunes announced a serious escalation: His committee, he said, is preparing to hold Andrew McCabe and assistant AG Rod Rosenstein in contempt for the DOJ's failure to comply with Nunes's subpoena.

Strzok was reassigned in July, shortly before Nunes issued the request for the bureau to turn over all documents relating to the Trump dossier. In a transparent attempt to save face, the bureau contacted Nnes shortly after the Strzok news broke on Saturday to say they were ready to comply with the subpoena. But Nunes rightly repudiated this offer, saying it was too little, too late. He laid out his argument for preparing the order of contempt in a statement released Sunday offering details of the committee's unsuccessful push to convince the FBI to turn over the documents it had requested.

Here’s a timeline of Nunes' contact with the Department of Justice courtesy of the Washington Examiner:

Republicans, including President Trump, pointed to the news as evidence that the entire probe into Russian meddling had been politically motivated.

Unsurprisingly, both the FBI and House Democrats have been silent on the issue, according to Bloomberg:

In his statement, included in full below, Nunes accused the FBI and the Department of Justice of willfully refusing to comply with an Aug. 24 committee subpoena in part by refusing the committee's request “for an explanation of Peter Strzok’s dismissal from the Mueller probe.” Nunes is giving the FBI until end of business day tomorrow to fully comply with the committee's requests, or face a contempt order before the end of the month.

In the statement, Nunes pointed to “a months-long pattern by the DOJ and FBI of stonewalling and obstructing this Committee’s oversight work,” including also withholding subpoenaed information about their use of an opposition research dossier that targeted Trump in the 2016 election.

In targeting McCabe and Rosenstein, Nunes explained that Attorney General Jeff Sessions was being excused from any contempt action by the committee because the AG had recused himself from the investigation into Russia meddling.

In addition to the threat of contempt, Strzok is also facing an internal review for his role in the investigation into Clinton's handling of classified information on her private email server. It has already been revealed that then-FBI Director James Comey drafted his letter excusing Clinton before she had even been interviewed. The Office of the Inspector General probe into Strzok will examine his role in a number of "politically sensitive" cases this year, according to Fox News.

At the FBI, senior managers are facing a serious dilemma: It's probable that the information pertaining to Strzok is only some of what the bureau has tried to keep from Nunes and the committee. Now, the FBI is facing a dilemma: Either rush to comply without having the time to screen all the documents that have been supplied to the committee, or continue to resist, and face a Congressional subpoeana. Either way, we're certain this isn't the last of the story.

House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) has instructed committee staff to prepare to cite the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in contempt of Congress after the agency failed to turn over documents explaining why agent Peter Strzok had been removed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

Byron York of the Washington Examiner reported Saturday that the committee had subpoenaed the FBI in August for information about why Strzok was dropped from Mueller’s team. Over the next three months, the FBI repeatedly refused to turn over the requested information. Nunes met and spoke to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, York reported, to no avail. Nunes and the committee continued to pursue the matter right up through Friday, Dec. 1.

The following day, the New York Times and the Washington Post reported that Strzok had been kicked off Mueller’s team because of anti-Trump text messages that he was found to have exchanged with FBI lawyer Lisa Page during the 2016 presidential election. Strzok had also worked on the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s storage of emails, including classified information, on an illicit private server. She was not prosecuted.

In addition, Strzok and Page were found to have carried on an extramarital affair. Page worked for FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who conservatives have long complained had a conflict of interest because his wife received campaign funding from Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, a close ally of the Clintons for decades.

The revelation of Strzok’s removal, and the reasons for it, are a huge blow to the credibility of Mueller’s inquiry, which critics have long claimed is riddled with partisan conflicts of interest. Some of the lawyers working for Mueller had donated to Hillary Clinton, and one had even done work for the Clinton Foundation, which was a target of the Trump campaign during the election (and may have been under investigation by the FBI as well).

Nunes and the committee had known about Strzok’s removal for months, but not the reasons for it, which were only revealed on Saturday in what York suggested was an “orchestrated leak” to the Times and the Post. In a furious statement on Saturday, Nunes accused the FBI of deliberately covering up political bias on the Mueller team.

“By hiding from Congress, and from the American people, documented political bias by a key FBI head investigator for both the Russia collusion probe and the Clinton email investigation, the FBI and DOJ engaged in a willful attempt to thwart Congress’ constitutional oversight responsibility,” Nunes said, as quoted by York.

Nunes has reportedly promised to take action on the citation for contempt if the FBI does not come clean by the end of December. He will likely have the backing of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI), who has also complained about the FBI’s apparent refusal to turn over information to the committee, especially on the degree to which it relied on the discredited “Russia dossier” that was paid for by Clinton and the Democratic National Committee.

Earlier this year, Nunes stepped back from direct involvement in the committee’s Russia investigation after questions about his role in exposing the “unmasking” of U.S. citizens in intelligence reports during the last days of the Obama administration. Democrats have stalled an ethics investigation into Nunes to keep him from resuming his role in a full capacity. However, Nunes has not given up his chairmanship and still wields the subpoena power.

During the Obama administration, Attorney General Eric Holder was found in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over documents on Operation Fast and Furious, which caused the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. He is the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

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