The FBI and Department of Justice are under scrutiny for applying a double standard of justice to their political enemies and prematurely closing investigations — specifically into Hunter Biden — that could yield information that would hurt their preferred political outcomes. In a scathing letter addressed to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray on Monday, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley detailed how partisanship has long tainted how the FBI and DOJ conduct their investigations.
“Attorney General Garland and Director Wray, simply put, based on the allegations that I’ve received from numerous whistleblowers, you have systemic and existential problems within your agencies,” Grassley said. “You have an obligation to the country to take these allegations seriously, immediately investigate and take steps to institute fixes to these and other matters before you.”
Relying on reports from “highly credible” whistleblowers in both government agencies, Grassley specifically explained how the FBI sought to “improperly discredit negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation and caused investigative activity to cease.” Because of the actions of several high-ranking federal officials, Grassley said, “verified and verifiable derogatory information on Hunter Biden was falsely labeled as disinformation.”
“The aforementioned allegations put a finer point on concerns that I have raised for many years about political considerations infecting the decision-making process at the Justice Department and FBI,” Grassley wrote. “If these allegations are true and accurate, the Justice Department and FBI are — and have been — institutionally corrupted to their very core to the point in which the United States Congress and the American people will have no confidence in the equal application of the law.”
Grassley wrote both Garland and Wray in May to warn them of “likely violations of Federal laws, regulations, and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) guidelines” by Assistant Special Agent in Charge Timothy Thibault, who hails from the Washington Field Office. According to that letter on May 31, the high-ranking, veteran FBI agent “demonstrated a pattern of active public partisanship” on his social media that “is likely a violation of his ethical obligations as an FBI employee.”
A letter from Grassley on July 18 detailed how Thibault’s political partisanship actually “went much deeper than the inappropriate social media posts” and “impacted his official decision-making on sensitive public corruption investigations.”
After Grassley called on whistleblowers to come forward about corruption, they disclosed to the senator that “Thibault declined to open or approve investigations based on partisan objectives notwithstanding the existence of proper predication,” including, as Grassley noted in his most recent letter, “an avenue of additional derogatory Hunter Biden reporting.” Thibault also allegedly tried to “improperly mark the matter in FBI systems so that it could not be opened in the future.”
As Grassley noted, it is Congress’s “constitutional responsibility” to “investigate the Executive Branch for fraud, waste, abuse and gross mismanagement — acts which undermine faith in the American people’s governmental institutions.”
That’s why the senator gave Garland and Wray until Aug. 8 to supply his office with records “related to derogatory information on Hunter Biden, James Biden, and their foreign business relationships,” as well as information about the agents who allegedly improperly closed investigations into the Biden family business.
Grassley did not touch on the DOJ or FBI’s previous known abuses, but it’s clear from the tone of his letter that he believes this is a problem deeply rooted in both agencies, having affected multiple presidential elections and hampered Americans’ confidence in the government.
“This double standard in the application of Justice Department and FBI policies has resulted in investigations opened in a manner appearing to benefit the political aims and objectives of a select few Justice Department and FBI officials,” Grassley wrote last week.