Another declassification of secret information related to the Russia investigation appears to be on the way.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said on Sunday to “stay tuned” for more after he released records showing British former intelligence officer Christopher Steele’s main source for his anti-Trump dossier was the subject of an FBI counterintelligence investigation a decade ago.
“There’s a day of reckoning coming just stay tuned, and there’s more coming, there’s something else coming, more damning than this believe it or not,” the South Carolina Republican said during an appearance on Fox News. Graham’s panel is running an investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation alongside one in the Justice Department headed by U.S. Attorney John Durham.
Graham recently made public declassified documents showing the FBI had previously investigated Steele’s main source, revealed to be U.S.-based and Russian-trained lawyer Igor Danchenko, as a possible “threat to national security” due to his connections with Russian intelligence. The same Steele source later cast doubt on the reliability and credibility of Steele’s dossier.
Late last week, Attorney General William Barr sent a letter to Graham revealing the declassified information about Steele’s primary sub-source. The attorney general also referred to what Graham may have been hinting at on Sunday.
“I have also alerted the Director of National Intelligence to certain classified information in the possession of the intelligence community, also brought to my attention by Mr. Durham, which bear upon the FBI’s knowledge concerning the reliability of the dossier,” Barr said in his letter. “Mr. Durham confirms that the disclosure of that information would not interfere with his investigation, and the Department otherwise defers to the DNI concerning the handling of this information.”
John Ratcliffe, who has served as the director of National Intelligence overseeing the nation’s 17 spy agencies since May, has assisted with declassifying various Trump-Russia investigative records over the past few months. His office did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo, who was interviewing Graham on her Fox News show Sunday Morning Futures, suggested the disclosure will come this week, but the senator was noncommittal on a timetable.
Still, Graham offered some insight into what the declassified records might contain.
“There’s three buckets here,” he said of alleged wrongdoing in the Trump-Russia investigation.
The first focuses on whether there was “any legitimate reason” for special counsel Robert Mueller to be investigating the Trump team for a crime regarding Russia. “In 2017, there was no evidence that anybody on the Trump campaign was working with the Russians,” Graham said.
The other two areas, according to Graham, relate to how the FBI “lied its a– off” to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court to obtain warrants to wiretap a member of President Trump’s 2016 campaign and the case against retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who was briefly Trump’s first national security adviser.
Mueller’s team concluded in early 2019 that Russia interfered in the 2016 election in a “sweeping and systematic fashion” but “did not establish” any criminal conspiracy between the Russians and the Trump campaign.
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s December report criticized the Justice Department and the FBI for at least 17 “significant errors and omissions” related to the FISA warrants against Trump campaign associate Carter Page, who denied any wrongdoing and never was charged with a crime, and for the bureau’s reliance on Steele’s discredited Democratic-funded dossier. Declassified footnotes from Horowitz’s report indicated that the bureau became aware that Steele’s dossier might have been compromised by Russian disinformation.
Durham’s inquiry has resulted in one guilty plea so far, from former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who played roles in the Clinton email and Trump-Russia investigation. Clinesmith pleaded guilty last month to altering a CIA email during the FISA process against Page to claim that the former Trump campaign associate was “not a source” for the CIA.
