More than 2,600 individual contributions collectively worth in excess of $416,000 were made to 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton by persons who listed the Department of Justice (DOJ) as their employer, according to federal campaign data compiled by opensecrets.org.
Contributions to President Donald Trump were paltry by comparison, coming from only 61 individuals listing DOJ as their employer and making 54 donations collectively worth $20,252. All of the data covered the election cycle from Jan. 1, 2015, through the 2016 election on November 8.
Forty-one of the Clinton donors gave the maximum allowable amount of $2,700 for the general election. None of the Trump donors gave the maximum amount; the largest single amount he received was $1,000.
Listing an individual’s employer or occupation is voluntary, so neither the Clinton nor Trump totals necessarily represent all of the contributions made to them by DOJ employees. The Hatch Act prohibits federal workers from engaging in partisan activities on government property or time, but they are not prevented from contributing to candidates or working for them when off duty.
The yawning gulf between donors to the Democratic and Republican presidential contenders provides additional context to the increasingly intense allegations by Republicans in Congress and attorneys representing Trump that partisan bias among DOJ employees, including high officials of the FBI, compromises sensitive investigations related to the 2016 campaign.
Most notable among those probes is that of special counsel Robert Mueller concerning allegations of collusion between agents of the Russian government and the Trump campaign. Other related investigations include the FBI’s probe under former Director James Comey into Clinton’s use of a private server and email system to conduct official business as secretary of State.
The contributions data may also fuel the investigation by the House Select Committee on Intelligence. The intelligence panel’s chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), blistered DOJ and FBI officials Thursday for their refusal to give the committee hundreds of documents it requested August 24.
In his letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Nunes said, “Several weeks ago DOJ informed the committee that the basic investigatory documents demanded by the subpoenas FBI Form FD-302 interview summaries did not exist.”
The dossier was paid for by the Democratic National Committee, using a law firm as a cutout to conceal the actual source of the funding. The wife of a senior DOJ official worked on the dossier while employed by Fusion GPS during the 2016 campaign.
“However, shortly after my meeting with you in early December, DOJ subsequently located and produced numerous FD-302s pertaining to the Steele dossier, thereby rendering the initial response disingenuous at best.”
The Steele dossier was compiled by the Fusion GPS opposition research firm with the assistance of Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer. The dossier relied on material supplied to Steele by sources linked to the Russian government and contained multiple allegations of sexual improprieties by Trump during a business trip to that country.
The dossier was paid for by the Democratic National Committee, using a law firm as a cutout to conceal the actual source of the funding. The wife of a senior DOJ official worked on the dossier while employed by Fusion GPS during the 2016 campaign.
“As it turns out, not only did documents exist that were directly responsive to the committee’s subpoenas, but they involved senior DOJ and FBI officials who were swiftly reassigned when their roles in matters under the committee’s investigation were brought to light,” Nunes continued in his letter to Rosenstein.
“As a result of the numerous delays and discrepancies that have hampered the process of subpoena compliance, the committee no longer credits the representations made by DOJ and/or the FBI regarding these matters,” he said.
Related: FBI Text Messages Give Ammunition to Trump, GOP
Nunes then directed DOJ and FBI to produce the documents requested months ago no later than Jan. 3, 2018, and instructed Rosenstein to provide a written explanation over his signature to justify any further withholdings.
Nunes also demanded dates on which six top DOJ and FBI officials will be made available to the committee for interviews. All six of the officials to be interviewed have been linked in some fashion to either the dossier, crude expressions of disgust with Trump, a mysterious “insurance plan” apparently intended to prevent Trump from winning the 2016 election — or Comey’s controversial July 2016 statement absolving Clinton of wrongdoing in connection with the email scandal.
“Unfortunately, the FBI’s intransigence with respect to the August 24 subpoenas is part of a broader pattern of behavior that can no longer be tolerated,” Nunes told Rosenstein. He added, “At this point it seems the DOJ and FBI need to be investigated themselves.”
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to reflect additional data and thus slightly higher contribution and individual donor totals for Clinton and Trump.
Senior editor Mark Tapscott can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter.
(photo credit, homepage image: Donald Trump, CC BY-SA 2.0, by Gage Skidmore / Clinton Rally, CC BY 2.0, by Keith Kissel)
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