Report: DOJ launches grand jury probe into 'RussiaGate'

By Thérèse Boudreaux
The Center Square

The U.S. Department of Justice is reportedly opening a grand jury investigation into an alleged plot by members of the Obama administration accusing President Donald Trump of colluding with Russia during the 2016 election.

The move, first reported by Fox News, marks the latest step by the second Trump administration to expose what it sees as attempts by former President Barack Obama, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and former intelligence officials to undermine Trump’s character and delegitimize his 2016 victory.

Three weeks ago, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard began declassifying documents appearing to show Obama – along with his senior advisors and top intelligence officials – pressured the intelligence community to contrive evidence that Russia tried to manipulate the 2016 presidential election in Trump’s favor.

Another document showed that the DNI’s 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment, which concluded that Moscow “aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances,” appeared not only false but also the result of apparent bad faith.

To reach their conclusion that Putin had attempted to help Trump win, top intelligence officials cherry-picked inconclusive information that supported the narrative, omitted or suppressed information contradicting the narrative, and based their “high confidence” assumptions on untrustworthy and dishonest sources, according to declassified documents.

Gabbard’s most recent bombshell, however, revealed unverified emails between Clinton campaign staffers and the vice president of a George Soros-affiliated group, planning to falsely tie Russia’s cyber interference attempts during election season to Trump.

According to the declassified Office of Special Counsel (OSC) investigation, the emails show that Clinton apparently approved of her campaign’s plan to “demonize” Trump by propagating the idea of “Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections.” 

The emails also appeared to show that Clinton ally Leonard Bernardo expected the FBI to “put more oil on the fire,” as a way to distract from Clinton’s previous email scandal, The Center Square reported.

Despite Trump administration rhetoric that the emails are a “smoking gun,” the declassified investigation noted that OSC never definitively determined “whether the purported Clinton campaign plan [to implicate Trump] was entirely genuine, partially true, a composite pulled from multiple sources, exaggerated in certain respects, or fabricated in its entirety.”

OSC did assess that “it is a logical deduction that [Clinton foreign policy advisor Julianne] Smith was, at a minimum, playing a role in the Clinton campaign’s efforts to tie Trump to Russia,” and that available evidence “supports the notion that the campaign might have wanted or expected the FBI or other agencies to aid the effort” via a formal investigation.

Gabbard nevertheless sent a criminal referral to Attorney General Pam Bondi. The DOJ’s grand jury probe is the first step toward securing a potential indictment, which would allow prosecutors to subpoena further evidence and collect testimonies. 

Though no charges have yet been filed, unsparing rhetoric by administration officials – including Trump, who flat-out accused Obama and Clinton of “treason” – suggest that some could be formally accused of sedition, conspiracy or other charges. 

Given the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling last year that presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution of official acts taken while in office, Obama is unlikely to face indictment.