Sen. Lindsey Graham offered new details on the Judiciary Committee’s upcoming deep dive into the Trump-Russia probe and a host of surrounding controversies.
The South Carolina Republican drew a distinction between his role as the committee’s chairman and that of Attorney General William Barr and U.S. Attorney John Durham, who have been given declassification authority by Trump and are conducting their own probe of the origins of the counterintelligence investigation.
“Mr. Durham will make a decision about who to prosecute, if anyone, and my goal is to explain to you and the American public how the system failed, and make sure it never happens again,” Graham said Wednesday on Fox News.
Graham repeated his promise to have Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz testify following the release of his impending report on alleged abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by the DOJ and FBI and on their relationship with British ex-spy Christopher Steele, whose unverified dossier they relied upon when making warrant requests to the FISA Court.
“We are going to declassify as much as we can, including the FISA warrant applications, give you all of the information that was in the system about how suspicious people were of Christopher Steele and how biased he was, and let you read it for yourself. Transparency and accountability is my goal,” he said.
Graham also said he’d call former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to testify about conversations they had in the wake of Trump’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey, whom Graham also plans to call. The discussions reportedly included the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office, and McCabe also alleges that Rosenstein was serious when he suggested surreptitiously recording Trump in the Oval Office, though Rosenstein disputes this.
“To me, that is a very chilling moment in American history, to have a conversation between the acting attorney general and the acting FBI chief about wiretapping the president of the United States,” Graham said.
As part of his probe, Graham has said he is also prepared to call officials like former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and possibly even former President Barack Obama to testify.
Graham said his committee would also examine whether General Mike Flynn was set up by investigators in the early days of the Trump administration.
Flynn, a key Trump ally who briefly served as his national security adviser before being swept up in the FBI’s counterintelligence probe, pleaded guilty to misleading investigators about his calls with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in 2017. But in recent days, Flynn’s new legal team, led by former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell, has accused the DOJ of pressuring Flynn into a guilty plea by improperly withholding exculpatory information from him.
“If there was no reason to believe that Michael Flynn was a Russian agent, why the hell did they talk to him anyway about his conversations on the transition team?” Graham said. “If all the things he said are true, who should be held accountable? Did they trick General Flynn? Did they have a reasonable belief he was working with the Russians? And why would the existing administration surveil the incoming administration about conversations about change in policy?”
Horowitz’s report on FISA abuse is expected in the coming weeks.
