DOJ Lawyer’s Controversial Background

A lawyer from the Department of Justice (DOJ) who was instrumental in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case against former President Donald Trump was previously involved in halting an investigation into the Clinton campaign, according to emails.

Richard Pilger, formerly with the DOJ’s Public Integrity Division, along with JP Cooney, who was then part of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, opposed starting a criminal inquiry into allegations that the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) “failed to accurately disclose” payments for the Steele dossier, which made claims about Trump’s connections to Russia.

In 2022, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) fined the Clinton campaign and the DNC a total of $113,000 for not properly reporting the funds used for the Steele dossier.

During the 2016 presidential race, the DNC and the campaign paid a total of $1,024,407.97 to the law firm Perkins Coie, which then paid Fusion GPS, the firm responsible for the dossier. In their filing with the FEC, they maintained these payments were for legal services.

In a June 14, 2019 email, Cooney commented, “The FEC has approved the campaign to hire a vendor (in this case, a law firm) and that vendor to contract with a third party to provide the service. I haven’t seen the FEC report, but I believe the payments to Fusion GPS would likely have been categorized as legal services. It’s possible it’s not the typical legal service, but proving it was an intentional misrepresentation would be tough.”

Because of input from Pilger and Cooney, the FBI chose not to investigate in 2019, as noted in a memo from Republican Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley.

The memo stated that before informal consultations from the DOJ, the author believed the facts in CLC’s complaint could lead to an investigation into the DNC’s misreported expenditures, particularly since there was evidence of concealment.

Grassley mentioned that whistleblowers approached his office, raising concerns that the DOJ was improperly intervening in matters related to potential criminal actions by Clinton and her campaign.

He remarked, “These documents indicate that the same officials who rushed to aid Ms. Clinton were also aggressively targeting President Trump and the Republican Party.” He expressed gratitude to Attorney General Bondi and FBI Director Patel for providing requested information and intends to keep probing this issue.

Cooney was a leading prosecutor on Smith’s team, while Pilger was involved in reviewing and sanctioning the Arctic Frost investigation connected to Smith’s case.