GOP Wants DOJ Watchdog to Produce Unredacted Records Related to Trump–Russia Election Ties

WASHINGTON, DC - AUGUST 06: Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) questions Chad Wolf, acting Secretary of Homeland Security, appears before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on August 6, 2020 in Washington D.C. The committee held a hearing on “Oversight of DHS Personnel Deployments to Recent Protests." (Photo by Toni Sandys-Pool/Getty Images)

Republican senators have written a letter to the Inspector General of the Department of Justice (DOJ) asking for uncensored records related to the agency’s review of the FBI probe into alleged Trump–Russia election links.

The April 25 letter (pdf) by Senators Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) concerns the 460 pages of “heavily redacted records” that the nonprofit Citizens United recently obtained in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The DOJ’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) delivered these records to Citizens United in response to the nonprofit’s request for interview transcripts linked to the department’s review of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

Crossfire Hurricane was the code name for an FBI probe that began in 2016 that looked into whether Donald Trump’s campaign coordinated with Russia to influence election results.

The DOJ OIG report of the review was titled “Review of Four FISA Applications and Other Aspects of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane Investigation.”

“Due to massive redactions applied to the interview transcripts by a number of agencies, including the DOJ OIG, these records are impossible to review. We write to request the unredacted version of those records,” the letter pointed out. “The records contained in the DOJ OIG’s February 3, 2023, FOIA production to Citizens United directly relate to our ongoing efforts to expose corruption within the FBI. It is also our job to oversee OIGs to ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of operations.”

The senators specifically highlighted four transcribed interviews and notes related to four individuals—Kathleen Kavalec, Lisa Page, Nellie Ohr, and Loretta Lynch—who played a key role in DOJ OIG’s investigation.

The Republicans also asked the DOJ to reveal how many of the 170 interviews it conducted with 100 witnesses were transcribed. In case any of the interviews were not transcribed, the department has to explain the reason and provide a list of such interviews. The letter sought a response from the DOJ no later than May 9.

FBI Pursuit of Trump

In the letter, the senators point out that they have been examining the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation as well as the OIG’s report on the matter “for years.” On Dec. 18, 2019,  Johnson, who is the chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, held a hearing to discuss the OIG’s findings.

The OIG’s report contained a statement from Bill Priestap, an FBI official, that the FBI “didn’t have any indication whatsoever” of Russian influence on the report, which is known as the Steele dossier. However, Grassley and Johnson’s investigation into the issue contradicted such a claim.

In April 2020, the OIG declassified certain footnotes of the “‘Review of Four FISA Applications and Other Aspects of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane Investigation” report at the urging of the two Republican senators.

Footnotes revealed that FBI officials had learned that critical information streams which flowed to the Steele dossier were likely tainted with Russian disinformation early on and throughout the FBI’s Operation Hurricane investigation.

“But the FBI aggressively advanced the probe anyway, ignoring internal oversight mechanisms and neglecting to flag the material credibility concerns for a secret court,” according to an April 10, 2020 press release.

“Despite later intelligence reports that key elements of the FBI’s evidence were the result of Russian infiltration to undermine U.S. foreign relations, the FBI still pushed forward with its probe.”

Trump and Crossfire Hurricane

In August last year, Trump revealed on Truth Social that he had “fully authorized the total declassification of any [and] all documents pertaining to the single greatest political crime in American history, the Russia Hoax,” in October 2020.

Special counsel Robert Mueller concluded that the Crossfire Hurricane investigation found zero evidence that Trump or his campaign coordinated with Moscow to influence elections.

Later, it was revealed that Crossfire Hurricane was partially based on a series of notes and memos concocted by Christopher Steele, a former spy from the United Kingdom, while he was conducting opposition research for a third party on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and Democrats.

In an April 5 Truth Social post, Trump called for Republicans to defund the DOJ and the FBI “until they come to their senses.”

“The Democrats have totally weaponized law enforcement in our country and are viciously using this abuse of power to interfere with our already under-siege elections,” he said.