[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 22 (Monday, February 3, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S533-S534]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATIONS
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, over the last 3 or 4 years, I have come
to the floor to discuss with my colleagues information that I get from
whistleblowers in the FBI and the Department of Justice, most of it
dealing with the subject of the critical weaponization of people at the
highest levels of the FBI and their violating of protocol, getting
involved in political situations that the FBI has no business being in.
Last week, when Mr. Patel was before my Judiciary Committee, I
released some new emails that I have gotten that show further
involvement of certain people in the case against Trump that Jack Smith
headed up. I am here today because, when I released those emails, last
week, there was a New York Times story that got it all wrong. So,
today, I want to bring to my colleagues' attention a January 30, 2025,
New York Times article from Adam Goldman and Alan Feuer about my and
Senator Johnson's oversight of the FBI.
In that article they said: ``FBI emails released Thursday showed that
agents and officials followed standard procedure'' when opening the
Trump elector case.
Well, they read it wrong, and I am going to tell you why they read it
wrong.
The article written by these two can be summed up like this: a very
wet kiss to the politically biased leadership within the FBI.
Last week, Senator Johnson and I made public FBI records that showed
a snapshot into the origins of the Jack Smith elector case against
Trump. Those records included a February 14, 2022, email from Assistant
Special Agent in Charge Thibault to his subordinate agent, Michelle
Ball. The subject line of that email was ``Elector Matter.''
My office has been told that Thibault handpicked subordinate agents,
including Michelle Ball and Jamie Garman, who are both referenced in
the documents that I released, to conceal his role as an initiating
agent. The documents Senator Johnson and I released support that.
In the February 2022 email, Special Agent Thibault says, in part:
``Here is [the] draft opening language we discussed.'' Attached to that
email is a Word document titled ``Elector.'' That Word document, when
opened, contains information that became part of the predicating
document that would later be approved to open the case code-named
``Arctic Frost.'' That was all about prosecuting then-Citizen Trump.
When opening the Word document, it says this: ``Author: Timothy
Thibault.'' It also says this: ``Last modified by: Timothy Thibault.''
Today, Senator Johnson and I will be publicly releasing a new email
that we have obtained that was sent from Thibault to Michelle Ball and
Jamie Garman on March 1, 2022. In the email, Thibault says: ``To add .
. . will come by to discuss.'' The document was attached to the email,
with language to be added to the Arctic Frost document opening the
investigation against Trump.
The document attached to the email lists the author and modifier as--
you guess it--Thibault.
The document itself is titled ``Arctic Frost,'' and it adds President
Trump as a criminal subject to the investigation. Notably, the document
lists then-Chairman Durbin's 2021 investigative report on Trump to help
justify that Trump yet fails to use my 2021 report, which provided much
needed context.
Now, the New York Times article said the FBI records Senator Johnson
and I made public ``showed that agents and officials followed standard
procedure,'' but that totally ignores the facts and evidence, let alone
not even considering the FBI rules for making these determinations for
opening a prosecution case.
So I go to these rules. Section 7.7.1 in the FBI's Domestic
Investigations and Operations Guide--and that is, essentially, the
FBI's manual--is titled, ``Opening Documentation.''
That rule shows the work flow approval and makes clear that
supervisors--I want to emphasize ``supervisors''--are to approve the
work product provided to them. The point here is Thibault did not
conduct himself like that sort of a supervisor.
In other words, the intent of this rule, based on its plain text, is
that subordinate agents provide work product to supervising agents for
the latter's approval. Should there be any doubt about this intent,
look no further than section 3.5.2.3 titled ``No Self-Approval Rule.''
That rule says, in part: ``an approval official (and the rule uses the
word supervisor to define this person) may not self-approve his/her own
work activity. An independent evaluation and approval of these
activities must be obtained, including the opening and closing of any
Assessment or predicated investigation.''
Then the rule says this: ``In the event that an FBI employee errantly
conducts a self-approval, the approval is considered substantial non-
compliance and must be documented.'' So that leaves you with Thibault
self-approving something that he wasn't supposed to self-approve.
Moreover, another FBI document defines ``general roles and
privileges'' of supervisors as this: ``Supervisor--assigns leads;
approves documents; assigns squad current workload.''
None of this says that a supervisor like Thibault is allowed to draft
and open a case and approve it for themselves.
Based on the facts and the evidence that Senator Johnson and I have
obtained to date, and based on the FBI's own rules, Thibault
essentially self-approved his own case, in violation of FBI
[[Page S534]]
rules, which means this guy was out to get Trump as fast as he could.
According to this case that, again, I say is named Arctic Frost, as
they code-named the Trump case, it was defective from the very start,
not only from a political infection standpoint but also because of
substantial noncompliance with FBI rules.
Getting back to the New York Times article, at this point, the paper
simply is an FBI stenographer and propagandist, parroting FBI lies,
claiming emails released by me and Senator Johnson ``showed that agents
and officials followed standard procedure'' when opening Arctic Frost.
As with most of the information in the leaks the FBI has laundered
through Goldman, the truth is quite the opposite of the FBI and the New
York Times' narrative.
Does the New York Times believe that it is normal for an Assistant
Special Agent in Charge to prepare case predication for the opening of
an investigation and then feed it to a street agent? And add to that
doing it to a former President of the United States.
Is it normal for FBI agents to ignore sources that counteract the
predication they so badly manufacture? Is it normal for an Assistant
Special Agent in Charge to boast anti-Trump social media poses under
his true name and title while he is overseeing the most politically
sensitive investigation for the FBI? Is it normal for an Assistant
Special Agent in Charge responsible for the most sensitive political
investigations in the FBI to be forced to resign for partisanship on
the job and then be found to have violated the Hatch Act for that same
partisanship?
It seems to this Senator that the New York Times has become the paid
publicist of senior members of the FBI, an unethical quid pro quo of
pushing their narratives in exchange for publishing false information.
On the occasion of the latest article as a mouthpiece for nameless
FBI sources, I invite the New York Times editorial board to undertake
its own investigation into Goldman's receipt of one-sided law
enforcement information leaked to him from FBI employees. Absent that,
continued New York Times reporting in this area is inherently
questionable.
Now, I started this by talking about occasionally, from time to time,
I come to the U.S. Senate floor to discuss information I get from
whistleblowers that deals with the political weaponization of the FBI.
I released some of those emails last week at the Patel hearing.
Now, what Patel is all about, by President Trump appointing him to
FBI Director, is simply to see that none of this stuff that I have
discussed in previous speeches on the floor of the U.S. Senate ever
happens again and that the FBI is going to be a law enforcement Agency
and not a political weaponization organization. And I say that about
the people that are on the seventh floor of the Hoover FBI Building. I
am not condemning the people that are working FBI cases in Iowa or any
of the other 49 States because they are doing their job. But they
should have the full support of the seventh floor of the building and
not be concerned about prosecuting a former President of the United
States, now reelected as the 47th President of the United States.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. HOEVEN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
____________________