Top Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee Monday demanded FBI Director Christopher Wray investigate his agency’s handling of the case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
“The American people continue to learn troubling details about the politicization and misconduct at the highest levels of the FBI during the Obama-Biden Administration,” wrote Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Mike Johnson of Louisiana.
“Even more concerning, we continue to learn these new details from litigation and investigations — not from you. It is well past time you show the leadership necessary to bring the FBI past the abuses of the Obama-Biden era,” the letter continued.
The lawmakers demanded Mr. Wray turn over a slew of information and make several FBI officials involved in the Flynn case available for interviews.
The lawmakers said they want to speak with the FBI’s former head of counter-intelligence Bill Priestap and agent Joe Pientka, who participated in a January 2017 White House interview that led to Flynn’s prosecution.
Explosive legal documents unsealed last week included a handwritten note by Mr. Priestap questioning whether the goal of interviewing Flynn was to get him fired or prosecuted.
The note also suggests agents planned to get Flynn “to admit breaking the Logan Act,” an arcane law that blocks U.S. citizens from speaking to foreign governments. Enacted in 1799, the law has never been used in a criminal prosecution.
Mr. Jordan and Mr. Johnson wrote the new revelations “make it clear that the FBI’s wrongdoing is worse than previously known.”
“Any criminal investigation grounded in Logan Act questions is an obvious political pretext to attack the Trump Administration,” Jordan and Johnson wrote. “FBI attorney Lisa Page admitted to Congress the Justice Department saw the Logan Act as an ’untested’ and ’very, very old’ statute.”
A separate legal filing last week disclosed that the FBI sought to close the Flynn case, but anti-Trump FBI official Peter Strzok pushed to keep the case, even though the investigation didn’t uncover any wrongdoing.
The lawmakers said the FBI also needed to “explain to the committee and the American public” why the FBI did not previously release this information. They also demanded that Mr. Wray discuss whether the FBI’s senior leadership prevented or delayed the disclosure of exculpatory evidence against Flynn.
In 2017, Flynn pleaded guilty to making false statements to Mr. Strzok and another FBI agent about his contacts with the former Russian ambassador.
Flynn has not yet been sentenced and his lawyer has pushed with withdraw his guilty plea, citing “egregious” FBI misconduct.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
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