Internal emails offer glimpse into early days of Trump election inquiry
A series of internal FBI emails released Thursday showed that agents and officials followed standard procedure nearly three years ago when they opened the historic criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s attempts to stay in power after he lost the 2020 election.
The emails were released by the Senate Judiciary Committee in the middle of a contentious hearing for the nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, at which Republicans sought to paint the FBI as a politicized agency that improperly went after targets like Trump.
But in fact, the emails showed that FBI investigators took normal bureaucratic steps and precautions when opening the extraordinarily sensitive inquiry into Trump’s attempts to overturn the election using slates of electors pledged to him in states he had actually lost.
The emails also revealed the names of several FBI agents and bureau officials who worked on the Trump investigation. It is rare for the FBI or the Justice Department to disclose the names of specific agents working on cases — particularly at a time when public servants are facing rampant threats.
One of the emails, dated March 22, 2022, contained a formal request by FBI agents to open the investigation into Trump, which was code-named “Arctic Frost.” That request, which was made public for the first time by the committee, asserted that the inquiry should be started based on evidence, including statements made by three lawyers — John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani and Boris Epshteyn — all of whom played a role in the fake electors scheme.
That scheme was arguably the longest-running and the most expansive of the multiple efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the election. Evidence about it was ultimately used by the special counsel, Jack Smith, in the indictment he filed in August 2023 accusing Trump of three intersecting conspiracies to disrupt the lawful transfer of power to his opponent in the 2020 race, Joe Biden.
The request by the FBI to open the Trump investigation shed new light on the timeline of the inquiry. It said, for instance, that a grand jury sitting in U.S. District Court in Washington began hearing evidence about Trump’s attempts to overturn the election on Jan. 31, 2022 and that the lead federal prosecutor on the case, Thomas P. Windom, had agreed slightly more than two weeks later with the FBI’s assessment to open a full investigation.
The inquiry formally began April 13, 2022, when the deputy director of the FBI, Paul Abbate, signed the request, according to another email released by the committee Thursday.
“Arctic Frost Open,” the subject line read.
The fake electors scheme involved dozens of Republican officials who created slates of electors claiming that Trump won in seven crucial states that he actually lost. It culminated in a campaign to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to use the false slates to subvert congressional certification of the outcome on Jan. 6, 2021 — and in the violent attack on the Capitol that unfolded as he refused to do so.
The FBI’s investigation of Trump has been a focus of the committee in part because a former agent who helped open the case was accused of having a political bias and has since become an example of bureau wrongdoing by Republicans and Trump’s allies.
Among those communicating in the emails were the most senior agent in the Washington field office, bureau lawyers, squad supervisors, a federal prosecutor and Timothy R. Thibault, the agent who helped open the case.
Thibault was a top agent and veteran public corruption investigator in the Washington field office and played a critical role in seeking justification to open an investigation. In one email, Thibault, the assistant special agent in charge, sends the opening communication to the head of the office.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the chair of the Judiciary Committee, has been laser focused on Thibault since he released a letter addressed to the FBI that accused him of partisanship in 2022. The letter laid out activity on social media that included expressing support for articles critical of Trump’s attorney general William Barr and reposting an article in The Atlantic titled, “Donald Trump Is a Broken Man.”
Former colleagues say that Thibault was not partisan but knew he displayed poor judgment on social media. They also say that Thibault and other FBI officials followed the rules.
Indeed one of his emails shows that the FBI should consider the inquiry a sensitive investigative matter, triggering a 2020 policy established by Barr.
The rule requires top FBI and Justice Department officials to sign off on the memo before investigating any candidate was meant to avoid influencing the race.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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