Trump’s allies take on the FBI and nominate a former agent
More than 25 years as an FBI agent, Timothy R. Thibault has brought in big names as he investigated public corruption, sent two Democratic congressmen to jail, and oversaw sensitive investigations into the Clinton Foundation and former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe , another Democrat.
But as Republicans and allies of former President Donald J. Trump seek to undermine federal investigations into the former president, they’ve set their sights on the little-known Mr. Thibault, who played a role in opening the Justice Department’s criminal investigation. to Mr. Trump’s efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss. In their casting, Mr. Thibault, who retired last year, is the face of bias and misconduct at the agency.
Powerful Republican lawmakers, including Representative Jim Jordan and Senator Charles R. Grassley, demanded that Mr. Thibault testify before their committees. Citing an anonymous GOP official, the panel denounced Mr. Jordan last year in a press release mr. Thibault as “Public Enemy No. 1”.
But his story is more complicated than Republicans make it out to be. As an investigator working on high-profile public corruption cases and international terrorism, he was highly regarded, eventually rising to one of the highest positions in the agency’s Washington field office, winning internal awards for his professionalism.
But in an atmosphere where Republicans were looking for evidence of anticonservative bias within the FBI, he opened the door to an intense scrutiny of his record. Republicans have cited several social media posts — including one that appeared to align him with critics of Mr Trump — and his handling of a number of cases involving allegations by Mr Trump of election fraud and misconduct by the Biden family .
A number of current and former FBI agents are siding with the Republicans to show bias within the agency. Some have even joined Mr. Jordan’s committee, including two former counterintelligence agents.
Another former agent — who now works for a conservative think tank and sought information from a right-wing author with ties to a former White House strategist for Mr Trump — appears to have filed complaints against Mr Thibault that Mr Grassley seized.
Mr. Thibault’s investigation has its roots in his management of a public corruption squad that became embroiled in a conflict that included investigating Hunter Biden, another focus of Republicans on Capitol Hill.
Mr Thibault was thrust into the harsh spotlight of politics in May 2022, when Mr Grassley released a letter addressed to the FBI accusing him of partisanship.
The letter detailed his social media activity, including voicing support for articles critical of Attorney General William P. Barr and reposting an article in The Atlantic titled “Donald Trump is a broken man.” Mr Grassley also accused Mr Thibault of an anti-Catholic post on Twitter about pedophiles. (Mr Thibault, responding to a Catholic priest denouncing abortion, wrote in his post: “Focus on the pedophiles.” Mr Thibault’s friends say he was raised Catholic.)
Mr Thibault, his friends and former colleagues say, was an excellent researcher who is not partisan but knows he showed poor judgment on social media.
Mr Thibault worked on many cases involving both sides, his former colleagues said. He was the key agent who successfully investigated former Representative William J. Jefferson, a Democrat from New Orleans, and Jesse L. Jackson Jr., a former Democratic congressman from Illinois. Both were convicted.
Former colleagues have also repeatedly acknowledged his work. In 2006, Mr. Thibault received an annual award recognizing “professional excellence” and “genuine character”. He also earned the Attorney General’s Award for Outstanding Services for his role in Mr. Jefferson’s case.
Mr. Thibault’s lawyer did not respond to emails asking for comment, but his law firm issued a statement last year after Republicans singled out Mr. Thibault.
“He firmly believes that any investigation will conclude that his supervision, leadership and decision-making were not influenced by political bias or partisanship of any kind,” the statement said.
The Office of Special Counsel is investigating whether Mr. Thibault’s posts violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from engaging in political activity on the job.
The FBI declined to comment. Mr. Thibault could not be reached for comment.
After focusing on international terrorism from 2018 to 2020, Mr. Thibault returned as a top agent, handling criminal cases at the FBI’s Washington field office.
There he clashed with three officers who were part of a public corruption team under his supervision at an FBI office in Manassas, Northern Virginia. Even before Mr. Thibault’s return, members of the squad had been warned by their supervisor that partiality was unacceptable due to previous harassing remarks by the officers.
Under Mr. Thibault, the squad appears to be at odds on how to handle politically charged matters.
In one instance, he rejected a request to open an investigation into whether Italian satellites had been used to skew votes in favor of President Biden, a conspiracy theory Trump propounded, two former law enforcement officials said.
The Justice Department under Mr. Trump also believed the theory to be unfounded. When the White House urged the department to investigate, acting deputy attorney general Richard P. Donoghue derided it as “sheer insanity.”
Mr. Thibault was also connected to another incident that has caught the attention of Republicans.
Before the election, two agents contacted Peter Schweizer, the president of the Government Accountability Institute, which has received millions of dollars from prominent conservative donors. Mr. Schweizer also writes for Breitbart, a right-wing news outlet, and is associated with Stephen K. Bannon, a former White House strategist for Mr. Trump.
In an interview, Mr. Schweizer said the two were seeking information on Hunter Biden, the president’s son, whose foreign business dealings have been the subject of intense Republican scrutiny for years.
Mr. Schweizer had recently published a book, “Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite,” in which he addressed the financial dealings of the Biden family. The agents, Mr. Schweizer said, wanted to know if he could share any documents related to Hunter Biden’s foreign business ties that he may have collected for his work. Mr Schweizer said he passed on company data and other files.
After The New York Post reported on the younger Mr. Biden’s laptop in October 2020, Mr. Schweizer said he informed FBI agents that he had a copy of the laptop’s contents, which was circulating in right-wing circles. But even though the agents had expressed interest, Mr. Schweizer said they never did anything about it, and in the end, “I never sent them anything.”
The relationship “ended abruptly without any explanation,” he added.
The two agents’ assistance to Mr. Schweizer caused tension among the FBI officials in Delaware leading the case, who seized the laptop in late 2019 using a grand jury subpoena, the former officials said.
At least one of the agents was ordered by Mr. Thibault to close that line of inquiry over concerns Mr. Thibault had received in a classified briefing about the possibility that the laptop might contain disinformation, one of the former law enforcement officers said.
In a press release, Mr. Grassley mr. Thibault of “improper conduct” in the Hunter Biden investigation. Mr Trump, for his part, lashed out on social media, claiming that prior to the 2020 election, Mr Thibault had been involved in “hiding and suppressing the “Laptop from Hell” from the public and media.
In his May 2022 letter to the FBI, mr. Grassley mr. Thibault has been linked to Bruce Ohr, a former Justice Department official, and his wife, Nellie Ohr, who were portrayed by Trump supporters as pro-Democratic conspiracy theorists out to get Mr. to destroy Trump. The three attended a seminar abroad in February 2016. One of the former law enforcement officers said Mr Thibault did not know the pair.
A person familiar with the matter said one of the agents involved in the outreach to Mr Schweizer, Thomas Olohan, drafted a lengthy memo accusing Mr Thibault of being biased against Mr Trump. In the memo, Mr. Olohan suggested that the fact that Mr. Thibault and the Ohrs had attended the same seminar was evidence of bias on Mr. Thibault’s part.
The men had clashed after Mr. Thibault learned that Mr. Olohan’s daughter – who reports for The daily signal, a conservative Heritage Foundation news site — had written about someone investigating her father, two former law enforcement officers said. After Mr. Thibault took him off that case, Mr. Olohan transferred to another criminal unit last year before retiring.
Mr. Olohan now works for the Heritage Foundation, where he is a senior research advisor to the group Oversight project, according to an internal directory. He did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
In March the Heritage Foundation sued the Justice Department in federal court looking for the FBI documents related to Mr. Thibault’s communications.
Mr. Trump and his allies have vigorously attacked the FBI’s reasons for opening the Russia investigation, seeking to undermine its legitimacy.
And now Mr. Grassley mr. Thibault accused of improperly opening an investigation into Mr. Trump and his campaign. Mr. Thibault drafted a memo last spring that began the investigation into efforts to create voter rolls pledged to Mr. Trump in states he lost in 2020, the former law enforcement officials said.
But under a policy created by Mr. Barr’s Justice Department in the months before the 2020 election, top FBI and Justice Department officials must sign the memo before investigating any candidate. The rule was intended not to affect the outcome of the race.
Charlie Savage, Luke Broadwater And Joe Becker reporting contributed. Kitty Bennett contributed research.