Ex-Obama officials face federal grand jury probe into whether they promoted false Trump-Russia ties

Sky News AU

3 days ago

The Justice Department is opening a federal grand jury investigation of former Obama administration officials who allegedly conspired to whip up a scandal about President Trump's purported links to Russia during the 2016 election campaign, The Post has learned.
The major legal development opens the door to criminal charges against prominent Cabinet members who served then-President Barack Obama, including former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey.
It was not immediately clear whether the grand jury would be based in heavily Democratic Washington, DC, or elsewhere.
Trump and current DNI Tulsi Gabbard have called for a federal probe into the early days of the Russia collusion probe dubbed 'Crossfire Hurricane' — though the commander in chief himself has acknowledged that his predecessor likely is immune from prosecution due to a 2024 Supreme Court ruling on the criminality of official presidential acts.
The president has accused the former officials of a treasonous and seditious conspiracy to undermine his first-term agenda, which ultimately led to more than two years of leaky investigations before special counsel Robert Mueller turned up no evidence of collusion.
Fox News first reported the grand jury investigation, which faces significant hurdles due to statutes of limitation for certain offenses.
Trump was criminally indicted twice by the Biden Justice Department and twice more by Democratic district attorneys as he sought a second non-consecutive term, and he has frequently suggested in recent days that he was too lenient with adversaries during his first term.
'I let [2016 Democratic presidential nominee] Hillary [Clinton] off the hook,' Trump told Newsmax host Rob Finnerty on Friday, referring to the former secretary of state's possession of classified information on a private home email server.
'I let her off the hook for what? And then I come in and they did the same thing to me. The difference is, they actually meant it, and they hurt a lot of people, and it was all a hoax.
'And now they have it in black and white. No, I think they should pay a price.'
Gabbard, a former Hawaii Democratic congresswoman, sent a criminal referral to Attorney General Pam Bondi last month raising the possibility that Obama and others broke the law — after the DOJ had already opened probes into Comey and Brennan for allegedly lying to Congress.
An email released by Gabbard showed that Obama ordered an intelligence assessment that found Russia intervened to help Trump defeat Clinton — though Gabbard said US intercepts actually showed that Russia expected Clinton to win and held back damaging material on her for later release.
'This is like proof, irrefutable proof that Obama was seditious, that Obama led, was trying to lead a coup — and it was with Hillary Clinton, with all these other people, but Obama headed it up,' Trump said last month.
Brennan, 69, is believed to be under investigation for allegedly lying to Congress in May 2023 about ex-British spy Christopher Steele's dossier of salacious claims against Trump.
Steele was paid by the conservative Washington Free Beacon and later by Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign and the Democratic National Committee to put together an opposition file on Trump — and the document helped underpin the later investigations.
Brennan told Congress in May 2023 that 'the CIA was very much opposed to having any reference or inclusion of the Steele dossier' in a major intelligence agency report — but records show he actually wrote at the time that 'I believe that the information warrants inclusion' in the Obama-ordered assessment.
Comey, 64, was interviewed in May by the Secret Service after posting an image interpreted as a threat against Trump and was accused by Republicans of lying to Congress in 2017.
Giving false testimony to Congress carries a penalty of up to five years in prison — but has a five-year statute of limitations. Treason does not have a statute of limitations, but no American has been convicted of that charge since 1949.
It's possible that prosecutors could develop a novel legal theory to revive seemingly expired charges, as performed by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg last year when he won a 34-count felony conviction against Trump for falsifying business records to conceal 2016 hush money payments.
Originally published as Ex-Obama officials face federal grand jury probe into whether they promoted false Trump-Russia ties