From the Washington Examiner: Newly released internal FBI and Justice Department emails show two senior career prosecutors in 2019, during the first Trump administration, repeatedly discouraged an FBI agent from opening a criminal investigation into whether Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and the Democratic National Committee improperly concealed payments that funded the Steele dossier.
The records were made public Thursday by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and include an FBI Electronic Communication dated July 2019 and email exchanges from June 5–21, 2019, involving Richard Pilger, then head of the DOJ Public Integrity Section’s election-crimes unit, and J.P. Cooney, who at the time served as chief of public corruption at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. Together, Pilger and Cooney advised against opening any investigation, according to their communications.
The emails show Pilger and Cooney repeatedly shutting down the agent’s questions about why the DOJ was not willing to investigate well-documented allegations that the Clinton campaign falsely reported payments for opposition research as generic “legal services.” Grassley said he obtained the latest information through the help of “courageous whistleblowers [who] came to my office years ago to sound the alarm that the Justice Department inappropriately interfered in efforts to investigate potential criminal activity committed by Hillary Clinton and her campaign.”
The payments in question originated in 2016, when the Clinton campaign hired the law firm Perkins Coie, where Marc Elias, then-attorney of the Clinton campaign, worked, to handle election-related legal matters. Perkins Coie later contracted with Fusion GPS to conduct opposition research during the presidential race, and in mid-2016, Fusion GPS retained former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele to produce a series of memos alleging ties between then-first-term candidate Donald Trump and Russia.
In a post on X Thursday evening, Grassley wrote, “New records from Bondi/Patel validate concerns whistleblowers raised with me years ago: partisan DOJ officials stopped FBI from investigating Clinton’s funding of phony Steele Dossier. These same officials went full steam ahead on Arctic Frost. Another example of POLITICAL DECISION MAKING.”
New records frm Bondi/Patel validate concerns whistleblowers raised w me yrs ago: partisan DOJ officials stopped FBI frm investigating Clinton’s funding of phony Steele Dossier These same officials went full steam ahead on Arctic Frost Another example of POLITICAL DECISION MAKING
— Chuck Grassley (@ChuckGrassley) November 14, 2025
CLICK HERE to access the records Grassley just released. Or read them below:
FBI Electronic Communication – Clinton Campaign by reportoftheday
READ MORE from the Washington Examiner.
Follow us on X (Formerly Twitter.)
The DML News App: www.X.com/DMLNewsApp
The Dennis Michael Lynch Podcast archive is available below, with the most recent on top. Never miss an episode. Subscribe to the show by downloading The DML News App or go to Apple Podcasts.
