Jordan asks Patel to end Biden-era FBI stonewalling on Trump-Russia collusion hoax docs

A top House Republican is calling upon the FBI’s new chief to comply with his committee’s requests for the truth about the FBI’s deeply flawed investigation into and promotion of the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.

Rep. Jim Jordan, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, told FBI Director Kash Patel on Wednesday that “the Committee still must fully assess and understand the lengths to which the FBI went to interfere in the 2016 presidential election,” according to a letter obtained by Just the News.

Jordan asked Patel to hand over a host of documents tied to the false collusion saga — documents which now-former FBI Director Christopher Wray had refused to provide.

“During the 117th and 118th Congresses, the Committee sent several letters requesting information and documents concerning the FBI’s failings in opening and conducting an investigation — code named ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ — into debunked allegations of collusion between President Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Russian government,” Jordan’s new letter to Patel said. “Unfortunately, former Director Wray failed to produce many of these materials before he resigned.”

Special Counsel John Durham’s 2023 report said the launch of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane was hugely flawed and that an “objective and honest assessment” of the facts “should have caused the FBI to question not only the predication for Crossfire Hurricane, but also to reflect on whether the FBI was being manipulated for political or other purposes,” but “unfortunately, it did not.”

Wray responded to the Durham report in the summer of 2023 by downplaying its findings and arguing to the House Judiciary Committee that “the conduct in 2016 and 2017 that Special Counsel John Durham examined was the reason that current FBI leadership had already implemented dozens of corrective actions, which have now been in place for some time,” while Wray contended that “had those reforms been in place in 2016, the missteps identified in the report could have been prevented.”

But Jordan’s new letter to Patel noted: “Tellingly, however, former Director Wray and former Attorney General Merrick Garland refused the Committee’s repeated requests for relevant records, including records comparing the Crossfire Hurricane investigation to the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton. Additionally, subsequent FBI operations have been similarly marred by political bias and an apparent disregard for fundamental rights, showing that any ‘corrective actions’ the FBI may have adopted in the aftermath of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation have been entirely ineffective.”

Jordan’s new letter focused in part on British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s discredited anti-Trump dossier, with the Ohio Republican asking Patel to hand over “all documents and communications referring or relating to the so-called Steele dossier or the Crossfire Hurricane investigation” — including all records tied to the opening, closing, and conduct of the Trump-Russia investigation; all interviews conducted by the FBI related to the investigation; and all Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act applications and returns associated with Crossfire Hurricane.

An investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller “did not establish” any criminal Trump-Russia collusion. DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz found huge flaws with the FBI’s investigation, criticizing the “central and essential” role of the dossier in the FBI’s politicized FISA surveillance of former Trump campaign associate Carter Page.

Durham’s report concluded that “neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.” The special counsel noted that “the FBI ignored the fact that at no time before, during, or after Crossfire Hurricane were investigators able to corroborate a single substantive allegation in the Steele dossier reporting.”

A federal judge last week blocked portions of Trump’s executive order from earlier this month which aimed at “Addressing Risks from Perkins Coie” — the law firm which helped Clinton’s 2016 campaign fund Steele’s debunked anti-Trump dossier.

Marc Elias, a former Perkins Coie lawyer who served as general counsel for Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, played a key role in the funding and spreading Steele’s discredited dossier, including by hiring Fusion GPS which hired Steele. The dossier was used to obtain FISA warrants against former Trump campaign associate Carter Page.

Durham’s special counsel inquiry further undercut the dossier’s credibility and resulted in an indictment against Steele’s alleged primary source, Igor Danchenko, who was revealed to have been on the FBI’s payroll as a confidential human source from March 2017 to October 2020 before he was charged in with repeatedly lying to the bureau.

Durham also charged Elias’s former Perkins Coie law partner, Michael Sussmann, who pushed debunked allegations claiming there was a secret back channel between Russia’s Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization, and with whom Elias worked closely in 2016.

Danchenko and Sussmann each were acquitted on charges brought by Durham that they lied to the FBI about the 

Then-FBI Director James Comey had fought to include information from Steele’s dossier in the January 2017 intelligence community assessment on alleged Russian election meddling. Comey also briefed then-President-elect Trump about the dossier’s most salacious allegations during a meeting at Trump Tower in January 2017.

Jordan’s new letter also asked Patel to hand over “all briefing documents concerning the Crossfire Hurricane investigation” which were provided to “the FBI Director or other senior executive officials, including the President, Vice President, Attorney General, and Central Intelligence Agency Director” from January 2016 to through Trump’s first inauguration in January 2017. The Republican chairman also asked the FBI provide the document titled “CF – CH Comparison” which was created during the Durham investigation and which “compared the treatment of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation and the Clinton investigation.”

Durham’s report said that then-Vice President Biden was briefed on what Durham dubbed the “Clinton Plan intelligence” in the summer of 2016. The intelligence concerned the purported “approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers” to “stir up a scandal” against Trump by “tying him” to “Putin and the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee.”

Then-Obama CIA Director John Brennan briefed Obama and others on the intelligence, and Durham noted that “it was also of enough importance for the CIA to send a formal written referral memorandum” in early September 2016 to since-fired FBI Director James Comey and then-FBI special agent Peter Strzok.

“Unlike the FBI’s opening of a full investigation of unknown members of the Trump campaign based on raw, uncorroborated information, in this separate matter involving a purported Clinton campaign plan, the FBI never opened any type of inquiry, issued any taskings, employed any analytical personnel, or produced any analytical products in connection with the information,” the special counsel assessed.

Jordan also asked for any and all documents and transcripts in possession of the FBI which were cited or used by Durham’s inquiry. The Ohio Republican asked Patel to hand all of this over by early April.

Just the News reported earlier this week that Patel has already begun handing over to Jordan troves of records related to “weaponization” scandals at the Justice Department which occurred during the Biden administration.