Attorney General Pam Bondi has officially authorized the Department of Justice to commence with grand jury proceedings over the Trump-Russia collusion operation that was originally launched under the Obama administration.
Bondi’s order will begin an official investigation with a potential for criminal proceedings, should a grand jury believe that the evidence suggests that possible crimes were committed during the Russian collusion investigation.
Fox News confirmed the launch of the criminal probe and added that the Department of Justice is taking the matter “very seriously.”
“Attorney General Pam Bondi today signed an order directing an unnamed U.S. federal prosecutor to take evidence to a grand jury relating to an alleged conspiracy to tie then-2016 candidate Donald Trump to the country of Russia,” the report said. “Now FOX News reviewed the one-page order just hours ago signed by the Attorney General. A source familiar with the probe confirms this as well.”
“While a DOJ spokesperson declined to comment on this report of an investigation, FOX is told Attorney General Bondi is taking the referrals from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, quote, very seriously,” the report continued. “The spokesperson says that Bondi believes there is, quote, clear cause for deep concern, end quote, and a need for the next steps. Now this move will comes just a couple of weeks after the Director of National Intelligence, you see her right there, Tulsi Gabbard, sent a criminal referral to the Justice Department regarding what she says proves there was a conspiracy to undermine Trump’s candidacy and later his first term in office.”
Details on the criminal investigation, such as the location of the grand jury meeting and the names of those who will be called to testify were not forthcoming at the time of the report.
The Justice department’s move comes after Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently shared new documents from the Russia investigation indicating that the Obama administration knew that there was scarce evidence to form a predicate to investigate the 2016 Trump campaign for Russian collusion.
At the center of the controversy is the now-discredited 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), produced under Obama’s orders and shaped by Brennan, Comey, and then-DNI James Clapper. That document claimed — with “high confidence” — that Vladimir Putin had a clear preference for Donald Trump in the 2016 election.
However, as newly declassified material confirms, that central claim rested on a single fragment from an unverified source whose access to Putin was unknown. Not only did the ICA authors omit this context — they elevated that claim to the top-line judgment in a report used to brief both President Obama and President-elect Trump.
According to Gabbard, former President Barack Obama and intelligence officials allegedly promoted a “contrived narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help President Trump win, selling it to the American people as though it were true. It wasn’t.”
