In November 2025 Chairman Grassley released internal emails and an FBI Electronic Communication. His statement says the records show Department officials refused to open a criminal investigation into potential campaign-finance violations by Hillary Clinton and the DNC regarding payments tied to Fusion GPS and the Steele dossier, and that “the decision to decline the investigation was made by Richard Pilger” of Public Integrity and J.P. Cooney, then at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.
Just the News and the Washington Examiner reported the same release: a July 2019 Washington Field Office EC sought a prosecutorial consult on “DNC and Fusion GPS FEC violations”; June 2019 emails involved Pilger and Cooney; Grassley says they advised against opening a case. The Examiner adds that an agent described a “chilling effect.” Those are characterizations of documents Grassley made public. This site does not invent quotations from emails it has not excerpted here. A later FEC fine of the campaign and DNC (2022, as Grassley and the Examiner recite) is an FEC matter. It is not a criminal conviction of Pilger.
The Federalist’s November 13, 2025, column repeated Grassley’s pairing of the decline with a later Arctic Frost approval. That pairing is commentary built on the Senate releases.