Bondi moves forward on Justice Department investigation into origins of
Trump-Russia probe
[August 05, 2025]
By ERIC TUCKER and ALANNA DURKIN RICHER
WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Pam Bondi has directed that the
Justice Department move forward with a probe into the origins of the
Trump-Russia investigation following the recent release of documents
aimed at undermining the legitimacy of the inquiry that established that
Moscow interfered on the Republican's behalf in the 2016 U.S.
presidential election.
Bondi has directed a prosecutor to present evidence to a grand jury
after referrals from the Trump administration's top intelligence
official, a person familiar with the matter said Monday. That person was
not authorized to discuss it by name and spoke on condition of anonymity
to The Associated Press. Fox News first reported the development.
It was not clear which former officials might be the target of any grand
jury activity, where the grand jury that might ultimately hear evidence
will be located or which prosecutors — whether career employees or
political appointees — might be involved in pursuing the investigation.
It was also not clear what precise claims of misconduct Trump
administration officials believe could form the basis of criminal
charges, which a grand jury would have to sign off on for an indictment
to be issued.
The development is likely to heighten concerns that the Justice
Department is being used to achieve political ends given longstanding
grievances over the Russia investigation voiced by President Donald
Trump, who has called for the jailing of perceived political
adversaries, and because any criminal investigation would revisit one of
the most dissected chapters of modern American political history. It is
also surfacing at a time when the Trump administration is being buffeted
by criticism over its handling of documents from the Jeffrey Epstein sex
trafficking investigation.
The initial, years-old investigation into Russian election interference
resulted in the appointment of a special counsel, Robert Mueller, who
secured multiple convictions against Trump aides and allies but did not
establish proof of a criminal conspiracy between Moscow and the Trump
campaign.
The inquiry shadowed much of Trump's first term in office and he has
long focused his ire on senior officials from the intelligence and law
enforcement community, including former FBI Director James Comey, whom
he fired in May 2017, and former CIA Director John Brennan. The Justice
Department appeared to confirm an investigation into both men in an
unusual statement last month but offered no details.
Multiple special counsels, congressional committees and the Justice
Department's own inspector general have studied and documented a
multi-pronged effort by Russia to interfere in the 2016 presidential
election on Trump's behalf, including through a hack-and-leak dump of
Democratic emails and a covert social media operation aimed at sowing
discord and swaying public opinion.
[to top of second column]
|
But that conclusion has been aggressively challenged in recent weeks
as Trump's director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and
other allies have released previously classified records that they
hope will cast doubt on the extent of Russian interference and
establish an Obama administration effort to falsely link Trump to
Russia.
In one batch of documents released last month, Gabbard disclosed
emails showing that senior Obama administration officials were aware
in 2016 that Russians had not hacked state election systems to
manipulate the votes in Trump's favor. But President Barack Obama's
administration never alleged that votes were tampered with and had
instead detailed other forms of election interference and foreign
influence.
A new outcry surfaced last week when Sen. Chuck Grassley, the
Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released a
set of emails that FBI Director Kash Patel claimed on social media
proved that the “Clinton campaign plotted to frame President Trump
and fabricate the Russia collusion hoax.”
The emails were part of a classified annex of a report issued in
2023 by John Durham, the special counsel who was appointed during
the first Trump administration to hunt for any government misconduct
during the Russia investigation.
Durham did identify significant flaws in the investigation but
uncovered no bombshells to disprove the existence of Russian
election interference. His sprawling probe produced three criminal
cases; two resulted in acquittals by a jury and the third was a
guilty plea from a little-known FBI lawyer to a charge of making a
false statement.
Republicans seized on a July 27, 2016, email in Durham's newly
declassified annex that claimed that Hillary Clinton, then the
Democratic candidate for president, had approved a plan during the
heat of the campaign to link Trump with Russia.
But the purported author of the email, a senior official at a
philanthropic organization founded by billionaire investor George
Soros, told Durham's team he had never sent the email and the
alleged recipient said she never recalled receiving it.
Durham's own report took pain to note that investigators had not
corroborated the communications as authentic and said the best
assessment was that the message was “a composites of several emails"
the Russians had obtained from hacking — raising the likelihood that
it was a product of Russian disinformation.
The FBI's Russia investigation was opened on July 31, 2016,
following a tip that a Trump campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos,
had told an Australian diplomat that he had learned that Russia was
in possession of dirt on Clinton.
All contents © copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights reserved |
