Attorney General Pam Bondi on Monday authorized the convening of a federal grand jury to examine potential criminal charges against former Obama administration officials tied to what Republicans call the Trump-Russia “hoax.”
The order directs an unnamed federal prosecutor to begin presenting evidence to grand jurors related to the alleged conspiracy to falsely link President Donald Trump to Russia ahead of the 2016 election, according to a source familiar with the effort.
The move follows a wave of criminal referrals submitted last month by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to the Justice Department, targeting former President Barack Obama, former CIA Director John Brennan, and ex-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Gabbard accused the officials of illegally conspiring to fabricate links between Trump and the Russian government.
By ordering the assembly of a grand jury, the government would be able to issue subpoenas to individuals that Trump allies have claimed were involved in a coordinated scheme to tarnish his 2016 campaign by falsely alleging it was colluding with the Russian government.
A grand jury could also consider an indictment if the Justice Department decided to bring a case. However, it is unclear which officials could be targeted under the scope of the newly commenced grand jury operation.
HOW SOROS IS ENTANGLED IN THE RUSSIAGATE SCHEME: DURHAM ANNEX
Bondi’s directive marks a sharp escalation in the Trump administration’s effort to bring criminal charges against those involved in what it views as a politically motivated misuse of federal power. On July 23, Bondi ordered the assembly of a “strike force” to assess the evidence released by Gabbard and to investigate potential “next legal steps” that may stem from Gabbard’s disclosures.
Last week, the declassified annex to former Special Counsel John Durham’s final report was made public by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA). It revealed that by July 2016, “The FBI was fully alerted to the possibility that at least some of the information it was receiving about the Trump campaign might have its origin either with the Clinton campaign or its supporters, or alternatively, was the product of Russian disinformation.”
Despite this alert, the FBI appeared “to have dismissed the intelligence information as not credible without any investigative steps actually having been taken to either corroborate or disprove the allegations,” Durham wrote on pages 22 through 24 of the report.
In recent weeks, Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii who turned independent during Trump’s 2024 campaign, has said Russia’s aim in 2016 was to create distrust in the U.S. Democratic system, though not to advantage Trump materially. She has pointed to material that the Russian government chose not to release publicly ahead of the election, including allegedly hacked Democratic National Committee emails that claimed then-Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton suffered from “psycho-emotional problems” and was allegedly on a daily regimen of “heavy tranquilizers.”
Former Obama administration officials, including Clapper and Brennan, pushed back on Gabbard’s public assertions in a joint statement last week, defending their work under the Obama administration.
“Every serious review has substantiated the intelligence community’s fundamental conclusion that the Russians conducted an influence campaign intended to help Mr. Trump win the 2016 election,” the pair wrote in a guest essay for the New York Times.
The former officials also called on the Trump administration to acknowledge that Russia “routinely meddles in our national elections and will continue to do so unless we take appropriate bipartisan action to stop it.”
But the thrust of the DOJ’s recent escalation efforts coincides with long-held allegations by lawmakers on Capitol Hill, including House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), who pointed to “problems” about Brennan’s statements under oath last month.
A separate CIA review declassified last month by CIA Director John Ratcliffe found that Brennan insisted on the inclusion of the discredited Steele dossier in the agency’s 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment despite pushback from two mission center leaders. This appears to contradict his testimony to Congress on May 23, 2017, in which he said the Steele dossier “wasn’t part of the corpus of intelligence information that we had.”
HOW SOROS IS ENTANGLED IN THE RUSSIAGATE SCHEME: DURHAM ANNEX
The Washington Examiner contacted the White House for a response.
