Trump loans in FBI’s sights
UNITED STATES: The investigation by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller into Russian meddling in last year’s US presidential election is facing mounting accusations of political bias as it emerges that he is widening its focus and has demanded details of President Donald Trump’s financial dealings with Germany’s largest bank.
Mueller’s credibility was questioned yesterday after it became clear that a top FBI agent who was recently removed from his team had watered down a key criticism of Trump’s Democrat rival and former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton over her use of private emails. He left Mueller’s team several months ago after sending anti-Trump messages to a colleague.
Peter Strzok led the FBI examination of the possible security risks posed by Clinton’s handling of her private email server, a saga that loomed over the 2016 election and was blamed by Clinton for her defeat. He was then the secondranking official in the FBI’s counterintelligence division.
Strzok was responsible for changing a key passage in the FBI report that the bureau’s director at the time, James Comey, delivered in July 2016. It exonerated Clinton of any crime but described her as having been ‘‘extremely careless in the handling of very sensitive, highly classified information’’.
An earlier draft from May 2016 that has since been sent to the Senate judiciary committee said she had been ‘‘grossly negligent with respect to the handling of classified material’’.
The drafting process was a team effort, according to officials, but the shift had potentially significant legal ramifications, as federal law on mishandling classified material requires ‘‘gross negligence’’ for criminal penalties.
Mueller, who was the director of the FBI for 12 years until 2013, reassigned Strzok from the Russia investigation this year. This followed the discovery of text messages in which Strzok and a female colleague on the team, with whom he was having an affair, swapped messages that were disparaging of Trump and supportive of Clinton.
Yesterday it emerged that investigators had sent a subpoena to Deutsche Bank, demanding that the German lender submit documents on its relationship with Trump and his family. The German bank is owed roughly US$300 million (NZ$436m) by Trump from property dealings before he became president, around half of his outstanding debt.
Trump said in July that if Mueller examined his family’s finances beyond any relationship with Russia, he would consider it ‘‘a violation’’.
Yesterday Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign adviser, attacked the apparent expansion of Mueller’s investigation. ‘‘If he goes into the Trump Organisation financial records, that’s a clear indication that [the investigation] has gone amok,’’ he told
After Flynn’s guilty plea last week,Trump responded with a four-day Twitter assault on the FBI’s credibility.
Devin Nunes, Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, accused Justice Department officials of concealing information about ‘‘documented political bias by a key FBI head investigator’’ amounting to a ‘‘wilful attempt to thwart Congress’s constitutional oversight responsibility’’.
Nunes said he had instructed his staff to prepare a resolution holding Christopher Wray, the FBI director, and the deputy attorneygeneral Rod Rosenstein in contempt of Congress, which could lead to prosecution.