Rounding Up The Usual Suspects: Grassley Releases Familiar Name In The Origins Of The Trump Investigation

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

For Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the weaponization of the criminal justice system has always followed a certain Casablanca pattern. Like Claude Rains as the venerable Captain Louis Renault, it is simply a matter of “rounding up the usual suspects.”

Grassley released FBI whistleblower records on Thursday showing that an anti-Trump figure, former FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Timothy Thibault, previously found to have violated the Hatch Act was a key factor in pushing the election charges brought by former Special Counsel Jack Smith.

Grassley suggested that Thibault violated protocol in opening and advancing the FBI’s initial probe into the 2020 election without sufficient predication. The investigation, called Operation Arctic Frost, was opened on April 13, 2022.

Years later, “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, [Thibault] walked” into Grassley’s.

Whistleblowers alleged that Thibault’s alleged “partisanship” likely impacted investigations involving President Trump and Hunter Biden.

Thibault was previously named as the agent who effectively scuttled the investigation into Hunter Biden and his laptop.

Fox News reported that a February 14, 2022 email revealed Thibault communicating with a subordinate agent on the foundations for an investigation of Trump.

In another email ten days later to John Crabb, a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, Thibault states:

“I had a discussion with the case team and we believe there to be predication to include former President of the United States Donald J. Trump as a predicated subject.”

The emails, and others detailed in the report, show Thibault pushing the investigation – in sharp contrast to his role in the Biden investigations.

Grassley and others are citing the evidence as supporting the need to “clean house” at the FBI and root out those who actively participated in the politicization of the criminal justice process.

For those of us familiar with Thibault from the Hunter Biden investigation, his role in the origins of the Smith investigation is deeply concerning.

Whistleblowers previously accused Thibault of “circumventing normal process and procedure to open full field investigations.” 

He was later found by the Inspector General to be violating the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from engaging in certain political activities.

The violations included Thibault retweeting social media posts by the Lincoln Project, a vehemently anti-Trump group.