By ERIC TUCKER

WASHINGTON (AP) — FBI Director Kash Patel pledged at his confirmation hearing that the bureau would not look backward, but the Trump administration’s fresh scrutiny of the Russia investigation has brought back into focus a years-old inquiry that continues to infuriate the Republican president.

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The Justice Department appeared to acknowledge in an unusual statement this week the existence of investigations into two central players from that saga, former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan, amid a new report revisiting a 2017 intelligence community assessment on Russian election interference.

That the Russia investigation, which shadowed President Donald Trump through his first term, would resurface is hardly surprising given Trump’s lingering ire over the inquiry and because longtime allies, including Patel and current CIA Director John Ratcliffe, now lead the same agencies whose actions they once lambasted. Whether anything new will be found is unclear in light of the numerous prior reviews on the subject, but Trump has long called for investigations into Comey and Brennan, and Patel — in his memoir — placed them on a list of “members of the Executive Branch Deep State” deserving of derision.

“The conduct at issue or alleged conduct at issue has been the subject of numerous other investigations — IG investigations, special counsel investigations, other internal investigations, congressional investigations. And none of those past investigations turned up any evidence that led to criminal charges against any senior officials,” said Greg Brower, a former FBI senior executive and ex-U. S. attorney in Nevada.

Word of the inquiry came as FBI and Justice Department leaders scramble to turn the page from mounting criticism from prominent conservatives for failing to release much-hyped files from the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking investigation. And as federal investigators have taken steps to examine the actions of other perceived adversaries of the administration, fueling concerns that the administration is weaponizing the criminal justice system for partisan purposes.

At issue now is a newly declassified CIA report, ordered by Ratcliffe, that faults Brennan’s oversight of a 2017 intelligence community assessment that found that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election because Russian President Vladimir Putin aspired to see Trump beat Democratic opponent Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The report does not challenge that conclusion but chides Brennan for the fact that a classified version of the intelligence assessment included a two-page summary of the so-called “Steele dossier,” a compilation of opposition research from a former British spy that included salacious and uncorroborated rumors about Trump’s ties to Russia.

Brennan testified to Congress, and also wrote in his memoir, that he was opposed to citing the dossier in the intelligence assessment since neither its substance nor sources had been validated. He has said it was included at the FBI’s urging.

But the new report casts Brennan’s views in a different light, asserting that he “showed a preference for narrative consistency over analytical soundness” and brushed aside concerns over the dossier because of its “conformity with existing theories.” It quotes him, without context, as having written that “my bottomline is that I believe that the information warrants inclusion in the report.”

Fox News reported Tuesday evening that the FBI had begun investigating Brennan for potentially making false statements to Congress as well as Comey, though the basis for that inquiry is unclear. A person familiar with the matter confirmed to The Associated Press that Ratcliffe, a staunch Trump defender and vocal critic of the Russia investigation, had referred Brennan to the FBI for possible investigation.

The person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a referral that has not been made public.

A Justice Department spokesperson issued a statement Wednesday referencing, without elaboration, the “criminal investigations” of Brennan and Comey, saying the department did not comment on “ongoing investigations.” It was not clear if the statement also referred to the continued scrutiny of Comey over the Instagram post. The FBI declined to comment.

Representatives for the men declined to comment this week, though Brennan said in an MSNBC interview on Wednesday that he had not been contacted by the FBI and knew nothing about an inquiry. He said he remained proud of the work intelligence agencies did to examine Russian interference in the 2016 election.

“I think this is unfortunately a very sad and tragic example of the continued politicization of the intelligence community, of the national security process,” Brennan said. “And quite frankly, I’m really shocked that individuals who are willing to sacrifice their reputations, their credibility, their decency to continue to do Donald Trump’s bidding on something that is clearly just politically based.”

A lengthy investigation by former special counsel John Durham that reviewed the intelligence community assessment as well as the broader Russia investigation did not find fault with Brennan.

FILE – Former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation James Comey speaks at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics’ JFK Jr. Forum in Cambridge, Mass., Feb. 24, 2020. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)

Comey has separately been interviewed by the Secret Service after a social media post that Republicans insisted was a call for violence against Trump. Comey has said he did not mean the Instagram post as a threat and removed it as soon as he realized it was being interpreted that way.

The Justice Department has taken steps in recent months to scrutinize other people out of favor with Trump opening inquiries into whether former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo lied to Congress about his state’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and into whether New York Attorney General Letitia James, who has sued Trump and his company, engaged in mortgage fraud. Both have vigorously denied wrongdoing. In other instances, the Justice Department has been directed by Trump to examine the actions of ex-government officials who have criticized him.

At the same time, the department refrained from opening an investigation into administration officials who disclosed sensitive military plans on a Signal chat that mistakenly included a journalist.

“Donald Trump is not interested in justice — he’s interested in settling scores and he views the vast prosecutorial powers of the Department of Justice as a way to do that,” said Liz Oyer, who was fired in March as the Justice Department’s pardon attorney after she says she refused to endorse restoring the gun rights of actor Mel Gibson.

Associated Press writer Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington contributed to this report.

We share the concerns of many Americans about the aggressive tactics of federal immigration agents around the country. However, recent attacks on federal and local officers that appear tied to immigration enforcement border on terror and must be prosecuted to the fullest extent.

While many of us watched with horror as the death toll in Central Texas mounted after catastrophic floods, a group of people ambushed an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Alvarado. Authorities said the arrestees vandalized vehicles on site and shot firecrackers into the facility to draw out corrections officers. A local police officer who responded to the scene was shot in the neck. We are grateful the officer wasn’t killed.

Federal prosecutors said 10 people face charges of attempted murder of a federal officer and discharging a firearm in relation to a crime of violence. An 11th person has been charged with obstruction of justice and conspiracy.

According to authorities, a search revealed weapons and body armor as well as a flag saying “RESIST FASCISM” and flyers saying “FIGHT ICE TERROR WITH CLASS WAR!” and “FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS.” The attack on the Prairieland Detention Center appears to be politically motivated and deserves investigation as potential terrorism.

Those of us frustrated or alarmed about the scope of the Trump administration’s immigration raids must unequivocally condemn violence against government workers and law enforcement. Not only is it criminal and morally reprehensible, but it also doesn’t help the cause of improving due process for undocumented people in detention.

Sadly, this wasn’t the only such incident in recent days. On Monday, a 27-year-old man fired his assault rifle into a Border Patrol facility in McAllen before authorities killed him. Three people were injured.

As we’ve written before, anti-government extremism is on the rise, and we must be on our guard, whether it’s coming from the political right or left. The latest assaults against federal officers overlapped with the ninth anniversary of the 2016 police ambush in downtown Dallas. An Army veteran who identified with Black nationalism ruthlessly murdered five police officers and injured others. Last summer, we lost another Dallas police officer to a shooter who followed the sovereign citizens movement.

This is the danger of cheap slogans like “resist fascism” and “fight the oligarchy” in the hands of extremists. Unprovoked violence will never be a noble act, and we must resist the lie that it can be.

— The Dallas Morning News

President Donald Trump’s executive order “Restoring Gold Standard Science” provides a directive to restore a higher standard for scientific research and discovery. Yet despite the concerns it raises, the very standards that it describes already exist and are widely applied.

Section one of the order describes why the administration believes that it is needed. Some of it focuses on the responses to the COVID pandemic. Many now agree that many facets of the response were off-base. The reason for this is much more than the biases noted in this section.

Scientific discovery often takes thoughtful reflection, which can be time consuming, fraught with missteps that guide and refocus the research process. The challenge during the COVID pandemic is that real-time policies could not be evaluated as quickly as the public health needs demanded. The net effect was less than ideal solutions and outcomes. With 20-20 hindsight, it is easy now to throw those who were offering guidance “under the bus.”

A parallel to this situation can be found when US Airways flight 1549 lost both its engines upon takeoff from NYC’s LaGuardia Airport due to a bird strike. Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger was forced to use his best judgment and experience to safely land the airplane in the Hudson River. An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board initially found that the airplane could have landed safely at LaGuardia or Teterboro airports. However, when a 35 second delay was inserted into the decision-making process, paralleling the real-life situation, testing on flight simulators demonstrated that Captain Sullenberger’s decision was indeed the right one, saving countless lives.

Much of what the executive order espouses is already embedded in the scientific method, a systematic approach to discovering new knowledge. Whether this knowledge is acquired through data collection and analysis, by physical experimentation, or using mathematical analysis based on axiomatic principles, the result is new understandings and insights.

Built into the scientific method is the need for reproducibility. This means that if one group of researchers makes a discovery following principles using the scientific method, then another group of researchers who follow the same principles should be able to make the same discovery.

The scientific method also allows for incremental discovery, whereby researchers can build upon known results to obtain new insights or stronger conclusions.

Yet new knowledge can only provide benefit if it can be widely disseminated, ideally in archival journals. This is where the peer review process comes into play. There are estimated to be more than 30,000 academic journals in existence, not all of which provide equal value. The quality of the editorial board and the integrity of the review processes are critical to assess the novelty, correctness, and value of the research being reported.

There are obstacles to such research-archiving. Predatory journals provide rapid dissemination with thin review processes. Their goal is to collect publication fees from unsuspecting researchers who wish to disseminate their findings quickly and with little resistance. Often, researchers early in their careers, or more seasoned researchers whose work is not meeting the peer-review standard of well-respected journals, fall prey to these.

The internet also provides an avenue for dissemination. For example, ArXiv allows researchers to post their unpublished manuscripts prior to peer review, allowing them to lay claim to their ideas. It also permits unscrupulous researchers to take others’ ideas and publish them as their own in peer-reviewed journals, creating a wild west environment for research dissemination.

The executive order also cites a growing number of publication retractions. In 2023, more than 10,000 papers were retracted from research journals. But a deeper dive into these numbers suggests that the problem in the U.S. is not as severe as the executive order suggests. Of the 10,000 papers retracted, 80 percent were from a single publisher.

Although the absolute number of papers retracted appears large, the retraction rate is under 0.25 percent, or less than one in 400 papers.

Then there is the issue of where the authors of the retracted papers reside. The U.S. is not in the top eight, with Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Russia, and China topping the list. Even then, the retraction rate in each of these countries was below one in 330 papers.

Scientific research is messy. The scientific method provides guardrails around it. There is nothing wrong with what the executive order espouses. Yet much of what it includes is already imbedded in the scientific method and the research integrity principals that are widely adhered to in academia, industry and government.

However, what is “good for the goose must also be good for the gander.” That means any reports issued by the administration — such as the recent MAHA report by the Department of Health and Human Services— should adhere to the same standards.

This places a high standard for any policies put forth by the administration that affect health, economics, technology, and science. It also opens the door for greater scrutiny of such policies and encourages ample feedback from the academic community, who are under currently attack by the administration.

What the Restoring Gold Standard Science executive order actually does is give academic, industry, and government researchers the opportunity to take a victory lap, given that much of it outlines the ideal that we all already aspire to.

Sheldon H. Jacobson, Ph.D., is a computer science professor in the Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. As a data scientist, he uses his expertise in risk-based analytics to address problems in public policy. This piece was originally published by The Hill.

The Trump administration’s attack on higher education is both wide-ranging and carefully targeted at certain institutions. It has included, figuratively speaking, cluster bombs and surgical strikes.

The ordinary human impulse when under assault is to flee or to hide. The more noble response, however, is to stand up and confront one’s attacker head on, acting with firmness, calm and clarity.

Many in higher education have opted for the former strategy. Michael Roth, the president of Wesleyan University in Connecticut, has taken the harder and more honorable route. He has been a strong and clear voice defending higher education in op-eds, TV appearances, podcasts and interviews with publications such The New Yorker, The Washington Post and Politico.

Roth is the statesman that higher education needs in this difficult time, explaining its mission and record, responding to criticisms and threats, and pointing the way to a better future.

His statesmanship has been shrewd, strategic and inspiring. Most especially, it has been courageous.

Roth is a Wesleyan alum. He graduated in 1978 and has been its president since 2007. He earned a doctorate in history at Princeton; his central academic interest is how people make sense of the past.

Perhaps this analytical perspective helps him make sense of this turbulent present.

There are several impressive features of Roth’s academic statesmanship.

First, he comes to the debate as a passionate, but also fair-minded, advocate for higher education. He is a staunch supporter but not an uncritical one. Roth has long argued that some parts of the higher education system are elitist and condescending. He acknowledges that elite institutions are often most accessible to the children of the wealthy and privileged. While his political views are left of center, he argues that more conservative voices are needed on college campuses to provide ideological balance and a wider range of perspectives.

Second, Roth has persuasively framed the challenges facing higher education as part of the administration’s attack on civil society, including law firms, nonprofits, cultural institutions and the media. Civil society, he says, must resist the slide toward authoritarianism that has gathered momentum. Roth believes the current moment is dire. “I think this is the greatest fear in civil society, including in the higher education system, since the McCarthy era. People are really afraid to be targeted by the government,” he told Politico.

Roth says that a vibrant civil society is essential and represents traditional American values. Leaders in civil society, and especially in higher education, should accept their responsibility to participate in this debate.

Third, he has been willing to engage on hard and specific issues such as antisemitism. In a sharply worded essay in The New York Times in April, Roth argued that the administration is using this issue cynically.

“As the first Jewish president of a formerly Methodist university, I find no comfort in the Trump administration’s embrace of my people, on college campuses or elsewhere,” he wrote. “Jew hatred is real, but today’s anti-antisemitism isn’t a legitimate effort to fight it. It’s a cover for a wide range of agendas that have nothing to do with the welfare of Jewish people.”

Fourth, he has acknowledged that he is now fearful, yet is compelled to step forward. “I think my job as a leader of the university is to speak up for the values that we claim to believe in, especially when they’re at odds with people with enormous power,” he said in The New Yorker.

Roth says he has had to become more combative than he prefers, but that he is obliged to respond when vulnerable people are getting mistreated.

Finally, Roth continues to depict America’s higher education system as a national treasure that has benefited from a strong partnership with the federal government. The research accomplishments of our universities have been breathtaking and have improved the lives of hundreds of millions around the world. And a college education, he declares, is a truly transformative opportunity.

Roth was the recipient of this year’s PEN/Benenson Courage Award that honors exceptional acts of courage in the exercise of freedom of expression. He began his acceptance speech by quoting a friend who told him that “if someone offered me a courage award, I’d duck.”

Roth did not duck then and has not ducked, hedged or wavered since. He has stood tall and, in doing so, reminds us of the powerful words of the great reformer, Martin Luther, “Here I stand; I can do no other.”

Would that all higher education leaders stand with him.

John T. Shaw is director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute. He wrote this column for the Chicago Tribune.