The Justice Department official who authorized $2 million in taxpayer-funded payouts to figures tied to the discredited Russia-collusion narrative has since departed the DOJ to help spearhead the “legal resistance” against President Donald Trump and other duly elected Republicans, according to new records reviewed by The Federalist.

Former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok and former FBI attorney Lisa Page, whose text messages exposed their role in promoting the Clinton campaign’s Russia-collusion narrative, sued the Justice Department, claiming the publication of those government-issued texts violated their privacy. Under the Biden administration, both secured substantial settlements: Strzok received roughly $1.2 million in taxpayer funds, while Page collected about $800,000.

“[W]e have identified Brian Netter, Deputy Assistant Attorney General as the individual that approved the settlement agreements,” a DOJ official told the Center to Advance Security in America in resonse to a Freedom of Information Act request the organization filed in 2024 after the payouts were announced publicly, The Federalist reported.

Netter served as the deputy assistant attorney general for the Federal Programs Branch during President Joe Biden’s administration.

Netter is now the legal director at Democracy Forward, a Democratic-aligned organization founded in 2017 to wage legal battles against Trump. The group boasts of suing the Trump administration more than 100 times during his first term and has continued to wield the courts to score political victories well into his second term, the outlet reported.

As The New York Times noted last November, the “liberal legal group” has positioned itself as one of the administration’s main adversaries.

Marc Elias—best known for his controversial roles in the 2016 and 2020 elections—serves as board chair of Democracy Forward. While acting as general counsel for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, Elias approved payments for the now-discredited Russia-collusion project, masking the spending as “legal services” through his law firm, The Federalist added.

Clinton ultimately only paid a $113,000 fine for misrepresenting the arrangement. Elias later led Democrats’ legal push to upend traditional voting procedures in 2020, aggressively expanding unsupervised mail-in balloting via Democratic-aligned nonprofits, the outlet added.

Other current and former board members of Netter’s organization include high-profile Democratic figures such as former Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, former Biden Chief of Staff Ron Klain, Vice President Kamala Harris’ sister Maya Harris, and former Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee head Mindy Myers, said The Federalist.

Netter served in former Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice from 2021 until early 2025, during which he opposed Trump’s bid for a preliminary injunction to stop the National Archives from turning over documents to the January 6 committee, a panel made up entirely of members selected by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Congressional oversight officials expressed outrage over the payouts to individuals involved in the Russia collusion hoax and demanded to know who approved them. Their efforts were stonewalled by agency officials, who claimed not to know who authorized the payments and refused to assist in identifying the responsible parties, the outlet reported.

“The American people are rightly concerned about the Biden Administration’s targeting of conservatives while their political allies were given special treatment,” James Fitzpatrick, director of the Center to Advance Security in America, told the outlet. “These settlements are a prime example of the outrageous abuse of power endured by the American people under Joe Biden.”

A Washington government-transparency group, meanwhile, has asked the Justice Department and the FBI to open a criminal probe into former FBI Director Christopher Wray, alleging he gave false testimony to Congress and impeded two high-profile investigations.

Oversight Project President Mike Howell told Fox News Digital that the referral targets Wray’s statements about the FBI’s “Richmond memo,” a document from the bureau’s Virginia office that revealed anti-Catholic bias, and his testimony concerning an alleged Chinese Communist Party (CCP) scheme to distribute fake driver’s licenses before the 2020 election, Fox News reported.