WaPo: Allegations FBI and DOJ Worked Against Trump No Longer at ‘Fringes of Political Debate’

Allegations that FBI and Justice Department officials worked against President Donald Trump’s election are no longer flickering at the “fringes of political debate” and are suddenly “center stage,” thanks to conservative activists such as Judicial Watch’s president Tom Fitton, according to a recent report by the Washington Post. 

From the Post:

“Until recently, it has been a lonely battle,” said Tom Fitton, whose conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch has helped drive the charges by unearthing internal Justice Department documents. “Our concerns about Mueller are beginning to take hold.”

…

Fitton’s Judicial Watch group, too, has a long history of investigating the Clintons, having filed numerous lawsuits against the administration of President Bill Clinton. During the 2016 campaign, the organization obtained thousands of emails written by Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state.

This year, Judicial Watch has helped stoke the attacks against the Mueller probe with material it obtained through lawsuits and Freedom of Information Act requests. The nonprofit group, which has a $35 million budget and 50 employees, does not release the names of its approximately 500,000 donors, Fitton said.

Fitton has frequently gone on Fox News, conservative websites and Twitter to report his findings. On Dec. 2, after Fitton tweeted that Trump “needs to clean house at FBI/DOJ,” Trump retweeted another user’s summary of Fitton’s statement.

In one email obtained through a Judicial Watch lawsuit, Andrew Weissmann, a senior lawyer working for Mueller, wrote in January that he was “so proud” of then-acting attorney general Sally Yates’s decision to defy Trump’s executive order banning travel by certain immigrants. The FOIA request was filed in May and was received in the fall, Fitton said. Other requests have taken longer or been rejected altogether, he said.

Judicial Watch also obtained emails regarding FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe that the group says show he was involved in helping his wife, Jill, run as a Democratic candidate for a state Senate seat in Virginia.

McCabe was told in one email that then-Director James B. Comey had “no issue” with McCabe’s wife seeking the seat. Another document said Hillary Clinton attended a June 2015 fundraiser for Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s political action committee, which in turn gave nearly $500,000 to Jill McCabe for her state Senate bid.

Read the full report here.