Former intel chief: FBI 'for sure' committed crimes investigating Trump-Russia collusion

Former acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell, who began the declassification of documents that unraveled the discredited Russia collusion narrative, tells Just the News he is certain from evidence he saw that the FBI committed crimes while investigating former President Donald Trump.

During an interview on the John Solomon Reports podcast, Grenell said FBI officials had every reason to know the evidence of collusion was faulty or false and proceeded to mislead the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and the Congress through lies and omissions.

"Political appointees and the leaders of the FBI and DOJ purposefully manipulated the truth," he said. "The people in the middle management. I've talked to them. I've talked to FBI agents, they knew that this was a phony exercise.

"But they were caught by their bosses, who knew that this was a phony Russian collusion hoax but allowed this information to go to the FISA courts and to the media and to everywhere else, and they saw people manipulating it," he also said.

After three years of investigation, Special Prosecutor John Durham has secured a single conviction, against Kevin Clinesmith on a charge the former FBI lawyer doctored evidence to submit to the courts.

Durham has also indicted former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann and former Steele dossier source Igor Danchenko on charges of lying to the FBI probe. Both have pleaded not guilty and are awaiting trial. 

"Do you have any doubt there are more crimes to be prosecuted by Durham?" Grenell was asked Tuesday. 

"Yeah, I have no doubt," he answered.

Asked further whether he saw evidence that the FBI violated laws during the probe, he added: "For sure."

Grenell said the FBI's misconduct, first revealed by a Justice Department inspector general report in 2019, must be viewed in the context of a much larger, troubling trend of government and media institutions betraying Americans' trust.

"For the political people at DOJ and FBI, that's where they need to be held to account," he said. "We hear a lot about, you know, manipulative politicians and political appointees manipulating the powers of government. But I've never seen it more rampant than in Democratic administrations, because the media allows them to get away with it."

Grenell's comments closely track those of his successor as DNI, John Ratcliffe, who told Fox News he delivered more than 1,000 documents to Durham and was confident more prosecutions are forthcoming.

"I would expect there to be quite a few more indictments because of that," Ratcliffe said last month. "There was not a proper predicate to begin that investigation. John Durham has said that publicly already."