Reps. Jim Jordan, R-OH, and Mike Johnson, R-LA, Monday night said FBI Director Christopher Wray “has declined to respond” to their May 4 letter requesting data and interviews with key FBI officials after the staggering revelations in the General Michael Flynn case. Now they want answers more than ever. So they wrote Agent Joe Pientka, a man who was present at many of the vital moments of the Flynn investigation.

“Because Director Wray has declined to respond to our request, we are forced to write to you directly,” Jordan and Johnson wrote in a letter to Pientka, who specifically participated in the January 2017 White House interview that led to Flynn’s prosecution.

🚨 #BREAKING: After failing to hear from FBI Director Christopher Wray, @Jim_Jordan & @RepMikeJohnson invite Bill Priestap and Joe Pientka to appear before the Judiciary Committee. pic.twitter.com/kFMzZw57T2

— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) May 19, 2020

Pientka also was also involved in the probe of former Trump aide Carter Page, which the DOJ has since admitted was full of fundamental errors and based on the discredited dossier of former MI-6/British Intelligence agent Christopher Steele. That was an anti-Trump document that the bureau was told could be part of a Russian disinformation campaign. They ignored that warning and proceeded to request a FISA warrant based on the false and scurrilous charges in the Steele dossier.

What the agents did not know, they claim, was that the document was paid for by the Clinton campaign. Pientka was present at much of the deliberations during these FBI operations.

His name was removed from the FBI’s website after media contacted the FBI about his prominent role in the Crossfire Hurricane Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant. That was a change first noticed by Twitter user Techno Fog. But Pientka remained in a senior agent at the agency’s San Francisco field office.

The FBI told the press before Pientka’s removal from the website that reporting on his identity could endanger his life. That makes no sense, as his role at the FBI is public and high level. This was a pathetic FBI attempt to cover up their biased and botched investigation.

Jordan and Johnson sent another letter on Monday to an attorney for Bill Priestap, the former assistant director of the FBI Counterintelligence Division. Priestap has also gone to cover but played an important role in the Flynn probe.

Priestap’s memo surfaced only this month, even though DOJ and FBI had been under a legal obligation to turn over all relevant, potentially exculpatory materials to Flynn’s legal team since February 2018 when Attorney General Bill Barr appointed U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen to review the DOJ’s handling of the Flynn case. Jensen unearthed the documents that the FBI was trying to hide. The vital documents pertained to one key interview with Flynn.

Then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe later said the interview was “very odd” because “it seemed like [Flynn] was telling the truth” to the two agents who interviewed him. Flynn, according to McCabe, “had a very good recollection of events, which he related chronologically and lucidly,” did not appear to be “nervous or sweating,” and did not look “side to side” — all of which would have been “behavioral signs of deception.”

Flynn’s treatment at the hands of the FBI and the Mueller probe took that obvious exoneration and played it completely and utterly as a confession of guilt. Now, Jordan and Johnson want to know why.

Meanwhile, the Senate probe of the entire fiasco proceeds apace. Senator Lindsey Graham, R-SC, is tracking down leads.

Graham’s office announced that his subpoena authorization “covers a number of documents, communications and testimony from witnesses, including [former FBI Director] James Comey, [former FBI Deputy Director] Andrew McCabe, [former Director of National Intelligence] James Clapper, [former CIA Director] John Brennan, [former Deputy Attorney General] Sally Yates and others.”

That should be a wide enough net to catch some really big fish.

This piece was written by PoliZette Staff on May 19, 2020. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

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