More than 150 individuals in Trump’s orbit faced scrutiny by the FBI after Biden’s attorney general approved the opening of an investigation related to the Trump campaign’s use of alternative electors. Documents released Tuesday by the House Judiciary Committee reveal that during the Biden Administration, the FBI used the Arctic Frost investigation to target Republicans in key battleground states, raising serious questions concerning whether the Democrat-led DOJ plotted with state prosecutors to bring criminal charges against Trump supporters.
“Arctic Frost investigators utilized FBI field offices from across the country to conduct its investigation,” the House Judiciary Committee explained in releasing nearly 200-pages of internal emails on Tuesday. The investigators also sought more than $16,000 in travel expenses to interview more than 40 individuals, according to the House committee. The documents contained a list of a veritable who’s who of players in the 2020 election, including Steve Bannon, Scott Perry, Rudolph Giuliani, Jeffrey Clark, John Eastman, Mark Meadows, Peter Navarro, Dan Scavino, Jeff Rosen, and Ed Martin.
Tuesday’s document dump follows news from last week that in early April of 2022, then-FBI Director Christopher Wray sought approval to launch Arctic Frost as a “full investigation.” In a memorandum drafted for Attorney General Merrick Garland, Wray claimed that “fraudulent certificates of electors’ votes were submitted to the Archivist of the United States” for Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin. Director Wray claimed the Washington Field Office concluded there were “specific and articulable facts that individuals, both known and unknown, engaged in a conspiracy to obstruct Congress’s certification of the Electoral College on January 6, 2020, including through the submission of fraudulent certificates of electors’ votes to the United States Government.”
Biden’s attorney general approved the opening of the criminal investigation, even though Wray’s memorandum detailed public comments by both the Trump team and the various alternative electors establishing that their intent was to preserve the legal challenges to the election. Equally shocking is AG Garland’s decision to approve the investigation even with clear precedent pointing to the propriety of the use of alternative electors in contested elections.
As The Federalist explained in “The Left’s 2020 ‘Fake Electors’ Narrative Is Fake News,” the exact same scenario occurred in Hawaii in 1960, when Nixon was certified the victor while Kennedy’s legal challenge to the outcome remained pending. Both Democrat and Republic electors certified that they were the “duly and legally qualified and appointed” electors for Hawaii. And the three Democrat electors, which included two retired federal judges, attested, alongside their Republican counterparts: “We hereby certify that the lists of all the votes of the state of Hawaii given for President, and of all the votes given for Vice President, are contained herein.”
Unlike most of Trump’s state court challenges, the Hawaii court reached the merits of Kennedy’s election challenge before Congress tallied the electoral votes, with the court concluding Kennedy won Hawaii. As a result — and only because the Democrat alternative electors submitted their vote for Kennedy to Congress — Hawaii’s three electors were included in Kennedy’s total.
Given this precedent, it is inconceivable that the FBI would launch an investigation into supposed fraud premised on the use of alternative electors, much less that the attorney general would approve the investigation.
Tuesday’s release of internal emails adds to the scandal, though, by showing that the FBI wasn’t merely targeting Trump or a few high-level officials, but potentially more than 150 individuals. There could be no valid reason for such a widespread probe other than to destroy not just Trump, but anyone within six-degrees of separation. This scorched-earth approach sent a clear message not to dare challenge a Democrat win.
Notwithstanding the extensive federal investigation into the use of alternative electors, Special Counsel Jack Smith only charged Donald Trump with crimes related to the contested election, although the indictment described several supposed co-conspirators. However, several states — or in the case of Georgia, Fulton County — pursued nearly identical criminal cases against the alternative electors, as well as other lawyers and members of the Trump campaign.
We know from the fight to force Fani Willis’ recusal in the Georgia criminal case against Trump and nearly 20 other Republicans that both the Fulton County prosecutor and her paramour-paid junior prosecutor engaged with Biden Administration officials both before and after obtaining the indictment. We also know that Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Michigan pursued similar criminal charges. What we don’t know yet, though, is whether the Biden Administration coached or coaxed those officials to weaponize the state criminal “justice” system.
Given what went down in Georgia, it wouldn’t be surprising: It just might take some time before congressional oversight committees uncover evidence that the Biden Administration concocted the state charges. In the meantime, though, scores of innocent Americans, whose only crime was backing Trump, remain in jeopardy in Arizona, Nevada, and Wisconsin. Only Michigan’s electors obtained a reprieve, after a state court judge dismissed the charges brought by Michigan’s Democrat attorney general, holding there was no crime.
And yet, Democrats continue to decry the Trump Administration for supposedly weaponizing the Department of Justice. After the Biden Administration targeted more than 150 Trump-connected Americans, that sob story won’t sell.
Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion, National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press.
She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance.
Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
