"The facts point to a coordinated effort by some in the FBI to change the course of the Clinton investigation by leaking sensitive information to the public," Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) wrote in a letter with other senior Democrats. Democrats seek alleged evidence of anti-Clinton 'bias' at the FBI Amid GOP attacks on the bureau, House Democrats say the FBI's real prejudice was against their party's 2016 presidential nominee.

Turning the tables on Republican charges that the FBI’s Russia probe is tainted by political bias, two top House Democrats are demanding Justice Department documents they say could reveal “politically-motivated misconduct" at the bureau meant to harm Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election chances, including potential leaks to a conservative website about the Clinton email investigation.

Days before Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is set to testify before the House judiciary committee, the two lawmakers are calling on Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions to turn over any material showing FBI agents or officials revealing “animus” toward Clinton.


"The facts point to a coordinated effort by some in the FBI to change the course of the Clinton investigation by leaking sensitive information to the public," write Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the senior Democrats on the House's judiciary and oversight committees.

The Democratic letter is a clear retort to conservative charges of bias against President Donald Trump within the FBI and in the office of special counsel Robert Mueller as both investigate Russia's 2016 election meddling. Democrats fear Trump might use such charges as grounds for firing Mueller.

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Amid broader complaints about the Justice Department's interactions with Congressional Democrats, the letter from Nadler and Cummings specifically focuses on whether articles published last year by the “fringe conspiracy website True Pundit" might suggest anti-Clinton bias at the FBI.

The letter suggests that True Pundit — an anonymously written pro-Trump website — received information from FBI agents frustrated with the agency’s handling of the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server. They ask Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions whether the information provided to True Pundit may have influenced the FBI’s decision to reopen the Clinton investigation a week before the election.

True Pundit published multiple stories last year claiming that the FBI did not bring charges in the Clinton case because senior officials there supported her campaign. The site claimed to have sources inside the government.

By fall of 2016, True Pundit had attracted the notice of the FBI's most senior officials. New emails released by the FBI, in response to a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act request, show that the bureau's deputy director, Andrew McCabe, forwarded to then-director James Comey an Oct. 26 True Pundit story which insinuated that McCabe’s wife had been paid by Clinton’s political allies to boost a failed 2015 bid for Virginia state senate.

“FYI. Heavyweight source,” McCabe wrote to Comey. (Comey demurred, saying that the leak appeared to come from “lower-level folks.”)

Nadler and Cummings write also cited cases in which Trump allies seemed to be aware of impending FBI action in the days before Comey reopened the Clinton email probe. Their letter cites a comment by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani — a Trump ally who acknowledges that he is in touch with FBI officials — that the bureau's rank-and-file were “boiling” over the Clinton probe.

Giuliani also said shortly before Comey reopened the email probe that the Trump campaign "has a couple of things up our sleeves that should turn things around."

The letter complains more generally that the Justice Department has favored Republicans by responding to their inquiries while ignoring Democratic ones, and by failing to share documents turned over to Republicans with Democrats on the same committees. The Democrats say the Justice Department provided more than 1,100 pages of documents to Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee — without notifying Democrats, per standard practice.

“Unfortunately, we did not learn of your interactions with the Majority until after [Judiciary] Chairman [Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.)] mentioned his efforts at last week’s Judiciary Committee hearing with FBI Director Christopher Wray,” they wrote. “Your failure to treat us as an equal participant in this investigation, to simultaneously provide us with copies of that correspondence, or to produce these documents to our offices directly, is unacceptable and inconsistent with House rules.”

A Justice Department spokeswoman said previous document requests by committee chairmen were not typically forwarded to the committee's ranking member unless the ranking member also submitted a request for the same information. Now that the request has been lodged, the department intends to send the material to the Democrats within 24 hours, she said.

The Democrats also demanded that DOJ turn over a response to their separate request about FBI bias by Dec. 21.

Meanwhile, House Republicans have pressed their own scrutiny of the FBI's handling of the Clinton email case. Last month, Goodlatte and Oversight Committee chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) demanded last month that the FBI produce documents related to its investigation of Clinton’s email practices.

At last week's hearing, Goodlatte also requested details on how the FBI obtained a surveillance warrant for Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page last year.

