Two top Republicans of the House Judiciary Committee on May 4 requested FBI Director Christopher Wray to “immediately review” his agency’s actions in its investigation of President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
Jordan, the top Republican on the House Oversight Committee, and Johnson, the ranking member of the House Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, gave Wray a deadline of May 18 to provide the information they requested and to facilitate the interviews with Priestap and Pientka.
They also asked Wray to explain when he “personally first learned of the FBI’s misconduct with respect to LTG Flynn,” explain “why the Committee and the American public are learning of the FBI’s misconduct with respect to LTG Flynn from court filings rather than from [Wray],” and explain “whether [Wray] or any other member of the FBI’s senior leadership prevented or delayed the disclosure of additional exculpatory information to LTG Flynn and his legal team.”
‘Perjury Trap’
The Republican congressmen noted in their letter to Wray that FBI documents unsealed on April 29 showed that “the FBI had apparently sought to set a perjury trap for LTG Flynn during an interview on Jan. 24, 2017.”
Flynn pleaded guilty on Dec. 1, 2017, to one count of lying to FBI agents during the interview on Jan. 24, 2017. The interview was conducted by Peter Strzok, who was at the time the FBI head of counterintelligence operations, and another FBI agent, whom The Epoch Times and other media have identified as Joe Pientka.
The recently unsealed FBI documents also showed that on Jan. 4, 2017—nearly three weeks prior to the Jan. 24, 2017, interview with Flynn—the FBI’s Washington field office had concluded there were no more leads to follow and that the FBI should close the Flynn probe, Jordan and Johnson noted in their letter.
The congressmen wrote, citing handwritten notes, that “the FBI’s goal was either getting LTG Flynn to admit to violating the Logan Act or to lie about the conversation so that he could be prosecuted or fired.”
FBI officials had developed a theory that Flynn broke the Logan Act by conveying to Kislyak the positions of the incoming administration on several diplomatic issues—including new sanctions that would see the expulsion of Russian diplomats and a United Nations vote on Israeli settlements.
The 1799 Logan Act prohibits private U.S. citizens from conducting diplomacy on their own with countries that the United States has a dispute with. Nobody has ever been successfully prosecuted for violating the law. It was Flynn’s job, as part of Trump’s transition team, to establish relations with foreign officials.
“The FBI ignored protocol to confront LTG Flynn about a potential violation of an obscure and rarely charged offense, with the real goal of forcing LTG Flynn’s resignation or prosecution,” Jordan and Johnson wrote, referring to the Logan Act.
“The FBI pursued LTG Flynn despite knowing that he was not a Russian agent and even after the FBI became aware that a central piece of evidence of alleged Russia collusion—the so-called Steele dossier—was based on Russian disinformation.”
