{"id":17120,"date":"2025-08-07T14:41:54","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T14:41:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=17120"},"modified":"2025-08-07T15:00:38","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T15:00:38","slug":"doj-launches-grand-jury-probe-into-russiagate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=17120","title":{"rendered":"DOJ Launches Grand Jury Probe into \u2018RussiaGate\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.wisconsinrightnow.com\/doj-launches-grand-jury-probe-into-russiagate\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\"russiagate\"<\/p>\n

The U.S. Department of Justice is reportedly opening a grand jury investigation into an alleged plot by members of the Obama administration accusing President Donald Trump of colluding with Russia during the 2016 election.<\/p>\n

The move, scooped by Fox News, marks the latest step by the second Trump administration<\/a> to expose what it sees as attempts by former President Barack Obama, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and former intelligence officials to undermine Trump\u2019s character and delegitimize his 2016 victory.<\/p>\n

Three weeks ago, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard began declassifying documents<\/a> appearing to show Obama \u2013 along with his senior advisors and top intelligence officials \u2013 pressured the intelligence community to contrive evidence<\/a> that Russia tried to manipulate the 2016 presidential election in Trump\u2019s favor.<\/p>\n

Another document<\/a> showed that the DNI\u2019s 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment<\/a>, which concluded that Moscow \u201caspired to help President-elect Trump\u2019s election chances,\u201d appeared not only false but also the result of apparent bad faith.<\/p>\n

To reach their conclusion that Putin had attempted to help Trump win, top intelligence officials cherry-picked inconclusive information that supported the narrative, omitted or suppressed information contradicting the narrative, and based their \u201chigh confidence\u201d assumptions on untrustworthy and dishonest sources, according to declassified documents.<\/p>\n

Gabbard\u2019s most recent bombshell, however, revealed unverified emails between Clinton campaign staffers and the vice president of a George Soros-affiliated group, planning to falsely tie Russia\u2019s cyber interference attempts during election season to Trump.<\/p>\n

According to the declassified Office of Special Counsel (OSC) investigation<\/a>, the emails show that Clinton apparently approved of her campaign\u2019s plan to \u201cdemonize\u201d Trump by propagating the idea of \u201cTrump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections.\u201d<\/p>\n

The emails also appeared to show that Clinton ally Leonard Bernardo expected the FBI \u201cput more oil on the fire,\u201d as a way to distract from Clinton\u2019s previous email scandal, The Center Square reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Despite Trump administration rhetoric that the emails are a \u201csmoking gun,\u201d the declassified investigation noted that OSC never definitively determined \u201cwhether the purported Clinton campaign plan [to implicate Trump] was entirely genuine, partially true, a composite pulled from multiple sources, exaggerated in certain respects, or fabricated in its entirety.\u201d<\/p>\n

OSC did assess that \u201cit is a logical deduction that [Clinton foreign policy advisor Julianne] Smith was, at a minimum, playing a role in the Clinton campaign\u2019s efforts to tie Trump to Russia,\u201d and that available evidence \u201csupports the notion that the campaign might have wanted or expected the FBI or other agencies to aid the effort\u201d via a formal investigation.<\/p>\n

Gabbard nevertheless sent a criminal referral to Attorney General Pam Bondi. The DOJ\u2019s grand jury probe is the first step towards securing a potential indictment, which would allow prosecutors to subpoena further evidence and collect testimonies.<\/p>\n

Though no charges have yet been filed, unsparing rhetoric by administration officials \u2013 including Trump, who flat-out accused Obama and Clinton of \u201ctreason\u201d<\/a> \u2013 suggest that some could be formally accused of sedition, conspiracy or other charges.<\/p>\n

Given the U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s ruling last year that presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution of official acts taken while in office, Obama will likely escape indictment.<\/p>\n

As of Tuesday, the DOJ has not yet confirmed the grand jury investigation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.wisconsinrightnow.com\/doj-launches-grand-jury-probe-into-russiagate\/ The U.S. Department of Justice is reportedly opening a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":17122,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wi-right-now"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17120"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17123,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17120\/revisions\/17123"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}