Category: Arctic frost
‘Conflicts of interest’: Democrat-led federal agencies allegedly blocked efforts to investigate Clinton Foundation
Federal agencies under Democratic leadership blocked investigation activities into the Clinton Foundation, according to new records obtained by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).
In 2015, Governmental Accountability Institute president Peter Schweizer published his book “Clinton Cash,” in which he accused Bill and Hillary Clinton of a pay-to-play and bribery scheme involving their foundation’s donors. The accusations prompted the Department of Justice and the FBI to open investigations into the Clinton Foundation; however, those efforts were ultimately shut down.
‘That’s a night-and-day departure from how the Biden Justice Department handled the Arctic Frost investigation against President Trump.’
On Monday, Grassley announced that new “behind-the-scenes” records revealed “how top leadership during the Obama-Biden administration repeatedly interfered to prevent DOJ prosecutors and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents from investigating the Clinton Foundation’s financial dealings.”
Grassley stated that records revealed that FBI leadership “obstructed investigative activities.”
“According to emails obtained by my office, on July 20, 2016 — 111 days before the 2016 election — an agent with the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division (CID) stated that, ‘based on the sensitivities surrounding the Clinton Foundation,’ agents were prohibited from ‘subpoena[ing] additional records related to the Foundation, the Clintons’; ‘conduct[ing] any interviews related to the Foundation or the Clintons’; and ‘shar[ing] any of the Foundation bank account info with any other office.’ Emails also show that the FBI ‘[did] not want to create any impression we were investigating the Clinton Foundation or the Clintons,’” Grassley wrote.
He claimed that the records indicated that in November 2016, the FBI blocked “the Clinton Foundation investigative team from accessing potentially incriminating evidence” on Anthony Weiner’s laptop.
RELATED: ‘Shut it down’: Newly released FBI doc reveals who apparently killed probes into Clinton Foundation
Photo by SAUL LOEB/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
When President Donald Trump’s first administration reopened the investigation in 2017, DOJ holdovers from the prior administration allegedly provided the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Arkansas with documents that omitted key information about the prior alleged interference from DOJ and FBI officials. When the attorney’s office requested additional information, it did not receive a response.
The court reportedly concluded that “there appear[ed] to be conflicts of interest” within the DOJ’s leadership that undermined the investigation into the Clinton Foundation.
RELATED: Declassified report: Obama’s FBI failed to search key evidence in Clinton email probe
Charles Grassley. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
“The mainstream media smeared any investigation into Hillary Clinton as unfounded nonsense, but in reality, line agents and federal prosecutors seeking to follow up on legitimate leads were sidelined by partisan leadership looking to save Clinton’s reputation. That’s a night-and-day departure from how the Biden Justice Department handled the Arctic Frost investigation against President Trump,” Grassley said.
“For too long, our Justice Department has chosen winners and losers instead of enforcing the law without regard to power, party, or privilege. That must never happen again. I thank Attorney General Bondi and Director Patel for turning over these records, so the American people finally know how their Justice Department failed in the Clinton investigations,” he added, referring to Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel.
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Docs: Jack Smith Ignored Constitutional Standards To Target GOP Senators In Arctic Frost Probe
‘The closer you look, the more brazen Jack Smith’s actions become,’ said Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.
Watergate was amateur hour compared to Arctic Frost
The FBI’s Arctic Frost investigation is confirmation that the left sees conservatives as enemies of the state and is fully intent on treating them as such.
Arctic Frost began in April 2022, with the approval of Joe Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, along with Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco and FBI Director Christopher Wray. In November 2022, newly appointed special counsel Jack Smith took over the probe. Smith declared he was focused on the allegations of mishandling classified documents, but Arctic Frost shows he was much more ambitious. He helped turn the investigation into an effort to convict Donald Trump and cripple the Republican Party.
The report indicts Smith for failing at lawfare, not for the lawfare itself.
It was revealed last month that by mid-2023, the FBI had tracked the phone calls of at least a dozen Republican senators. Worse still, with the imprimatur of Justices Beryl Howell and James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Smith issued 197 subpoenas targeting the communications and financial records of nine members of Congress and at least 430 Republican entities and individuals.
The organizations targeted were a “Who’s Who” of the American right, including Turning Point USA, the Republican Attorneys General Association, the Conservative Partnership Institute, and the Center for Renewing America.
Not content with active politicians, these subpoenas also went after advisers, consulting firms, and nonprofits. One subpoena targeted communications with media companies, including CBS, Fox News, and Newsmax. Normally, a telecommunications company should inform its clients and customers about subpoenas. But Howell and Boasberg also ordered nondisclosure orders on the dubious grounds that standard transparency might result in “the destruction of or tampering of evidence” — as if a U.S. senator could wipe his phone records or a 501(c)(3) could erase evidence of its bank accounts.
The scale and secrecy of Arctic Frost are staggering. It was a massive fishing expedition, hunting for any evidence of impropriety from surveilled conservatives that might be grounds for criminal charges. One can see the strategy, typical among zealous prosecutors: the threat of criminal charges might compel a lower- or mid-level figure to turn government witness rather than resist.
But Smith had an even grander plan. By collecting financial records, he was trying to establish financial ties between those subpoenaed and Trump. Had Smith secured a conviction against Trump, he could then have pivoted to prosecuting hundreds of individuals and entities under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. This would have led to asset freezes, seizures, and further investigations.
Smith laid out a road map for crushing conservative organizations that was supposed to be implemented throughout a prospective Biden second term or a Harris presidency.
Fortunately, voters foiled Smith’s efforts.
A false equivalence
The meager coverage of Arctic Frost thus far has compared the scandal to the revelations of Watergate. But the comparison doesn’t hold. Arctic Frost involved significantly more surveillance and more direct targeting of political enemies than the Senate Watergate hearings of 1973 and 1974 managed to expose.
Setting aside campaign finance matters and political pranks, the most serious crimes the hearings exposed pertained to the Nixon administration’s involvement with break-ins and domestic wiretapping.
In the summer of 1971, the White House formed a unit to investigate leaks. Called the “Plumbers,” this unit broke into the offices of Dr. Lewis Fielding, who was the psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers. Transferred over to the Committee to Re-elect the President at the end of the year, the unit then broke into the Democratic National Committee’s offices in the Watergate complex. The hearings exposed the burglars’ connection to CRP — and to the White House.
RELATED: Trump’s pardons expose the left’s vast lawfare machine
Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images
The administration also authorized warrantless wiretaps. From May 1969 until February 1971, in response to the disclosures of the secret bombing of Cambodia, the FBI ran a 21-month wiretap program to catch the leakers. This investigation eventually covered 13 government officials and four journalists. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover submitted the wiretapping authorizations, and Attorney General John Mitchell signed them.
As a matter of optics, it was the surveillance of the members of the media that provoked the scandal. Since they were critical of the Nixon administration, it looked like the administration was targeting its political enemies. As a criminal matter, the issues were less about the actions themselves, as it was at least arguable that they were legal on national security grounds. Instead, it was more about the cover-up. When these wiretaps came up in the hearings, Mitchell and others deceived investigators, opening themselves up to charges of obstruction of justice.
A troubling parallel
One aspect revealed during the Watergate hearings could be compared to Arctic Frost. The hearings exposed extensive domestic spying that preceded the Nixon administration. The tip of the iceberg was the proposed Huston Plan of June 1970, which became one of the most sensational pieces of evidence against the Nixon administration. Named for the White House assistant who drafted it, the Huston Plan proposed formalizing intelligence coordination and authorizing warrantless surveillance and break-ins.
Nixon implemented the plan but rescinded it only five days later on the advice of Hoover and Mitchell.
Who were those Americans who might have had their civil liberties affected? It was the radical left, then in the process of stoking urban riots, inciting violence, and blowing up government buildings. The plan was an attempt to formalize ongoing practices; it was not a novel proposal. After Nixon resigned, the Senate concluded in 1976 that “the Huston plan, as we now know, must be viewed as but one episode in a continuous effort by the intelligence agencies to secure the sanction of higher authority for expanded surveillance at home and abroad.”
For years, ignoring the statutes that prohibited domestic spying, the CIA surveilled over three dozen radicals. The military and the Secret Service kept dossiers on many more. The FBI operated COINTELPRO, its surveillance of and plan to infiltrate the radical left, without Mitchell’s knowledge. And as the Senate discovered, “even though the President revoked his approval of the Huston plan, the intelligence agencies paid no heed to the revocation.” This was all excessive, to say the least.
RELATED: Damning new docs reveal who’s on Biden admin’s ‘enemies list,’ expose extent of FBI’s Arctic Frost
Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Watergate helped expose a far larger and longer surveillance operation against left-wing domestic terrorists. Comparing this to Arctic Frost suggests that the shoe is now on the other foot: the state regards right-wing groups as equivalent to domestic terrorists. Once, the national security state was abused to attack the left. Now, it’s abused to attack the right. This is hardly an encouraging comparison.
Lawfare for thee, not for me
There’s a third reason that the comparison to Watergate doesn’t hold. In the 1970s, abuses generated a reaction. The Huston Plan, for instance, was squashed by the head of the Department of Justice. Controversial surveillance plans wound down eventually. Wrongdoing was exposed, and the public was horrified, worsening the people’s growing mistrust of government. Lawmakers passed serious reforms to rein in intelligence agencies and defend Americans’ civil liberties.
Survey today’s landscape, and it doesn’t look like there will be any similar reaction. If you’re a conservative staffer, activist, contract worker, affiliate, donor, politician, or lawmaker, you’ve learned about the unabashed weaponization of the federal justice system against you without the presence of any crime. What’s even more disturbing is that this investigation went on for 32 months, longer than Mitchell’s wiretaps.
During that time, no senior official squashed the investigation, and no whistleblowers leapt to defend conservatives. There wasn’t a “Deep Throat” leaking wrongdoing, as there once was in Deputy Director of the FBI Mark Felt. There weren’t any scrupulous career bureaucrats or political appointees in the Justice Department or elsewhere ready to threaten mass resignations over a legally spurious program, as happened to George W. Bush in the spring of 2004.
No telecommunication company contested the subpoenas, as happened in early 2016 when Apple disputed that it had to help the government unlock the iPhone of one of the terrorists involved in the December 2015 San Bernardino shootings. Neither bureaucrats nor corporations are coming to the rescue of the civil liberties of conservatives.
Public opinion won’t help, either. Senator Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) has called for “Watergate-style hearings.” But they wouldn’t work. Watergate was a public-relations disaster for the presidency because it spoke to an American public that held its government to a moral standard of impartial activity. Television unified this audience while also stoking righteous fury over the government’s failure to meet that standard.
Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images
The hearings were effective only because they reached a public sensitive to infringements of civil liberties and hostile to the weaponization of the state against domestic targets. But 2025 is not 1975. Even if one could unite the American public to watch the same media event, televised hearings on Arctic Frost wouldn’t bring about a major shift in public opinion. In fact, many voters would likely approve of Arctic Frost’s operations.
For one part of the country, lawfare happens and it’s a good thing. Jack Smith’s lawfare does not embarrass or shame the left. If anything, he is criticized for insufficiently weaponizing the law.
To date, the largest exposé of his methods to reach the legacy media, published in the Washington Post, criticizes Smith for prosecuting Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents in Florida (where the alleged crime occurred) rather than in the District of Columbia. It’s an impressive investigative report, assembling aides and experts to showcase Smith’s mistake. Left unstated is the answer to the naïve question: If the offense was committed in Florida, why was it a mistake not to pursue the case in D.C.? Because that was the only district where Smith could guarantee a favorable judge and jury.
To the conservative mind, most Americans still believe that protecting civil liberties matters more than attacking one’s enemies.
The report indicts Smith for failing at lawfare, not for the lawfare itself. In this environment, where lawfare is already taken for granted as the optimal strategy to defeat the enemy, exposing the details of Arctic Frost is like publicizing the Schlieffen Plan’s failure in 1915 and expecting the Germans to be ashamed enough to withdraw. They already know it didn’t work.
Exposing the plan won’t change anything. The election of Jay “Two Bullets” Jones as Virginia’s attorney general is an indication not only of the presence of a fanatic at the head of Virginia’s law enforcement but also of what a good proportion of the Democratic electorate expects from the state’s most vital prosecutor. His task is to bring pain to his enemies.
The 1970s saw the abuses of the national security state generate a forceful public reaction. That turned out to be a rare moment. Instead of a pendulum swing, we have seen a ratchet effect. The national security state has acquired more weapons over the intervening decades, and the resistance to it has grown weaker. This has hit conservatives hardest, because many still imagine that our constitutional culture remains largely intact.
To the conservative mind, most Americans still believe that protecting civil liberties matters more than attacking one’s enemies. From that point of view, American politicians operate under electoral and self-imposed restraints that will impel them to take their opponents’ due process rights seriously or risk being shamed and losing elections. But these restraints are now ineffectual and hardly worth mentioning.
Unlike in the 1970s, there will be no cultural resolution to the problem of lawfare. The problem will only be solved by political means: using power to punish wrongdoers, deter future abuses, and deconstruct the weaponized national security state.
When you’re presumed to be an enemy of the state, the only important question is who will fight back on your behalf.
Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally at The American Mind.
Grassley: DOJ Partisans Killed Probe Into Clinton, DNC Steele Dossier Cash
‘These records show the same partisans who rushed to cover for Clinton rabidly pursued Arctic Frost, which was a runaway train aimed directly at President Trump,’ Grassley said.
Biden FBI’s Arctic Frost surveillance of lawmakers could cost the government, thanks to ‘real teeth’ measure in funding bill
Republican lawmakers officially passed their funding bill to reopen the government on Monday night. In addition to getting the ball rolling on reopening the government, their bill sets the stage for possible retribution over the Biden FBI’s Arctic Frost operation.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) published damning documents last month regarding the Biden FBI’s Operation Arctic Frost, an investigation that ultimately morphed into former special counsel Jack Smith’s federal case against President Donald Trump regarding the 2020 election.
‘Arctic Frost was a grotesque abuse of power. It was Joe Biden’s Watergate.’
The documents revealed that the bureau not only subpoenaed records for over 400 Republican individuals and entities but secretly obtained the private phone records of numerous Republican lawmakers as part of what the Iowa senator called a “fishing expedition.”
According to the Grassley, those behind Arctic Frost “were spreading a wide net because they were looking for anything they could to hook on Trump, put Trump in prison, keep him from running for president, and things of that nature.”
The funding bill passed by the Senate this week contains a provision that would enable any senator whose phone records were “acquired, subpoenaed, searched, accessed or disclosed” without his or her knowledge to file a civil lawsuit against the government inside the next five years for at least $500,000 plus legal fees for each instance of a violation.
Senators would be able to take legal action if at the time their records were seized, they were a target of a criminal investigation; a federal judge issued an order authorizing a delay of notice to the senator in question; the government complied with the judge’s order; and the subpoena was faithfully executed.
RELATED: Republicans torch Obama judge over his role in Biden FBI’s ‘partisan vendetta,’ demand impeachment
Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images
The provision, which is retroactive to 2022, notes that “no officer, employee, or agent of the United States or of any Federal department or agency shall be entitled to assert any form of absolute or qualified immunity as a defense to liability” in relation to such violations.
“It’s designed to put real teeth into federal law that prohibits the executive branch from surveilling the Senate,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) — whose Senate office hard-line and cellphone records were reportedly targeted — told the Daily Caller. “Arctic Frost was a grotesque abuse of power. It was Joe Biden’s Watergate.”
“[It’s] a common-sense provision to ensure that no Department of Justice — Democrat or Republican — ever does that again,” added Cruz, who confirmed to Politico that Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) was “directly” responsible for the inclusion of the provision.
Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) told the Daily Caller the provision serves to protect against “a weaponization of government against members of the Senate” and stressed that “senators are going to take responsible action, and that’s what we’ve done here.”
Democrat lawmakers complained about the measure.
“I’m shocked that a huge change in policy would be dropped into a bill at the last minute, and the first that most senators learn about it is in the press,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told the Caller. “This is one more way in which the bill that passed the Senate tonight is even worse for the American people.”
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) similarly clutched pearls over the provision, telling Politico, “I am furious that the Senate minority and majority leaders chose to airdrop this provision into this bill at the eleventh hour — with zero consultation or negotiation with the subcommittee that actually oversees this work.”
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Shutdown Deal Will Allow Senators To Sue Over ‘Arctic Frost’ Probe
GOP lawmakers secured a provision in the shutdown deal taking aim at the Biden FBI’s “Arctic Frost” surveillance campaign into a vast swath of Republicans and conservative entities. The measure, tucked inside a Senate legislative branch appropriation bill that passed Monday night, allows senators whose phone records were seized without their knowledge during former special […]
Liberal media remains DEAD SILENT on Biden FBI’s Arctic Frost operation against conservatives
Recent history suggests that the liberal media will go to great lengths to amplify a story if it appears beneficial to the left even if the story lacks any basis in fact.
Among the many cases that conform to this apparent pattern were liberal outlets’ hysterical coverage of the Russian collusion hoax, Joe Biden’s supposed competence as president, Jussie Smollett’s apparent hate hoax, the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, and Covington Catholic students’ harassment by radicals during the 2019 March for Life in the national capital.
On the flip side, factual stories that pose a political threat to the liberal powers that be tend to get little to no mainstream coverage. This is especially true of the latest revelations about the Biden FBI’s Arctic Frost operation.
According to recent analysis conducted by the media watchdog outfit NewsBusters, ABC, CBS, and NBC News avoided the story in their television broadcasts in recent days.
‘Not one single broadcast network aired one solitary second.’
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) published damning documents on Oct. 6 detailing how the Biden FBI sought private cellphone records from at least nine Republican lawmakers during Operation Arctic Frost — an operation that set the stage for at least one case brought against President Donald Trump by former Attorney General Merrick Garland’s dubiously appointed special counsel, Jack Smith.
Grassley released additional documents last week showing that Smith and his team subpoenaed records for over 400 Republican individuals and entities as part of what the Iowa senator called a “fishing expedition.”
Blaze News previously noted that as of midday Thursday, liberal news outfits such as ABC News, the Atlantic, CBS News, the New York Times, and the Washington Post had yet to cover the latest tranche of documents exposing how the Biden lawfare regime hounded American conservatives across the country in their print coverage.
RELATED: Damning new docs reveal who’s on Biden admin’s ‘enemies list,’ expose extent of FBI’s Arctic Frost
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
The media blackout was apparently just as bad when it came to television coverage.
ABC, CBS, and NBC News not only neglected to cover the Arctic Frost bombshells on their flagship Wednesday night, Thursday morning, and Friday morning shows but apparently dodged over the weekend as well, reported NewsBusters.
“There was no discussion, at any time and on any of the Sunday shows, about the use of the extraordinary powers of federal law enforcement against those perceived to be in support of President Donald Trump ahead of a potential 2024 presidential run,” wrote NewsBusters analyst Jorge Bonilla.
“There was no discussion about the subpoenas, obtained in secret, against 197 individuals — including multiple Members of Congress. There was no mention of the slew of subpoenas against nonpartisan organizations perceived to be in support of the former president,” continued Bonilla. “There was no mention of the secretive nature of the subpoenas issued to banks and Big Tech organizations, which came with their own gag order, which may well constitute an impeachable offense for the judges that issued such orders.”
“Had any of this happened under a Trump administration, you’d have everyone across the dial howling bloody murder,” added Bonilla.
“Not one single broadcast network aired one solitary second,” Media Research Center President David Bozell noted on Friday. “Normally they’ll mention it in the most innocuous way so they can later say, ‘We covered it,’ but this time they didn’t even bother.”
Blaze News confirmed that, except for one sympathetic NBC News article about Jack Smith on Wednesday, news outlets ABC, CBS, and NBC did not report on the Arctic Frost allegations made last week.
Rather than address the historic weaponization of the FBI against sitting senators and conservative groups, talking heads on the liberal networks instead exhausted airtime yammering about the construction of the White House ballroom, the potential expiration of SNAP benefits, Prince Andrew’s loss of title, and talk of the weather.
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