The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal called on Thursday, October 26, for Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Counsel Robert Mueller to step down from his role in investigating alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election.
“It is no slur against Mr. Mueller’s integrity to say that he lacks the 'critical distance' to conduct a credible probe of the bureau he ran for a dozen years,” the Journal’s editorial board wrote. “He could best serve the country by resigning to prevent further political turmoil over that conflict of interest.”
The statement also noted:
It turns out that Russia has sown distrust in the U.S. political system -- aided and abetted by the Democratic Party and perhaps the FBI. This is an about-face from the dominant media narrative of the last year, and it requires a full investigation.
The Washington Post revealed Tuesday that the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee jointly paid for that infamous “dossier” full of Russian disinformation against Donald Trump.
Those organizations “filtered the payments through a U.S. law firm (Perkins Coie), which hired the opposition-research hit men at Fusion GPS,” the board continued. “Fusion in turn tapped a former British spook, Christopher Steele, to compile the allegations, which are based largely on anonymous, Kremlin-connected sources.”
“Strip out the middlemen,” the statement added, “and it appears that Democrats paid for Russians to compile wild allegations about a U.S. presidential candidate. Did someone say ‘collusion?’”
According to an article on Breitbart written by Adam Shaw, “The board was writing in response to recent reports that suggest the FBI uncovered evidence of the Russian bribery and money laundering in the U.S.”
Shaw stated that the choice was made “ahead of a 2010 decision by the Obama administration to greenlight the partial sale of the Canadian firm Uranium One to Russian energy giant Rosatom. The deal transferred control of 20 percent of U.S. uranium stocks to the Russians.”
“Government Accountability Institute (GAI) President and Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Peter Schweizer broke the Uranium One scandal in his book Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich,” the reporter stated.
Schweizer noted that “Clinton’s State Department, along with other federal agencies, approved the transfer of 20 percent of all U.S. uranium to Russia and that nine foreign investors in the deal gave $145 million to the Clinton Foundation.”
“However,” Shaw indicated, “the controversy re-emerged last week after The Hill reported that the FBI uncovered ‘substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering’ to expand Russia’s nuclear footprint.”
The effort began “as early as 2009, but the Justice Department did not inform Congress and the public, and did not act on the information until 2014, after the sale was completed,” the Breitbart reporter noted.
In addition, Shaw stated, “the FBI also reportedly found evidence that Russian officials routed ‘millions of dollars’ to the U.S. to be funneled into the Clinton Foundation -- at a time when Hillary Clinton was serving as secretary of state and served on the government body that approved the deal.”
Also, the Washington Post reported this week that the Democratic National Committee and Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign funded Fusion GPS as it put together the so-called “Trump dossier,” a collection of mostly uncorroborated accusations against Trump, many of which the Journal noted are based largely on Kremlin-connected sources.”
“This raises the possibility that Democrats funded a Moscow-pushed misinformation campaign against Trump,” Shaw charged.
“Both sets of revelations turn the Democrat-pushed accusations that Trump colluded with the Russians on their heads,” Shaw noted, “and raise questions about the Clinton campaign, the DNC and the Obama administration’s dealings with the Russians instead.”
“The Journal’s editorial argued that the FBI’s role in such controversies now needs to be investigated,” the reporter stated. “Mueller served as FBI director between 2001 and 2013, so he led the FBI at the same time the Uranium One deal was being debated and approved."
Regarding the dossier, the editorial board charged:
The more troubling question is whether the FBI played a role, even if inadvertently, in assisting a Russian disinformation campaign.
We know the agency possessed the dossier in 2016, and according to media reports, it debated paying Mr. Steele to continue his work in the run-up to the election.
“This occurred while former FBI Director James Comey was ramping up his probe into supposed ties between the Trump campaign and Russians,” Shaw noted.
“The American public deserves a full accounting of the scope and nature of Russian meddling in American democracy,” the Journal editorial board statement asserted, “and that means following the trail of the Steele dossier as much as it does the meetings of Trump campaign officials.”
