The chairman of the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee announced his intention to pursue subpoenas for records and testimony related to the Trump-Russia investigations and the “unmasking” of members of the Trump team.
Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, the Republican head of the key oversight committee, made his intentions clear in a short business meeting agenda announcement for next Thursday morning that was obtained by the Washington Examiner, showing he is looking for a committee vote to empower him to seek documents and compel interviews in his investigation into the Trump-Russia investigators.
If his committee members agree, Johnson will join a number of inquiries into the actions taken by investigators during the Obama administration and early in the Trump administration against President Trump and those in his orbit. They seem likely to stretch into the summer and fall in the midst of a presidential campaign between Trump and Obama’s former Vice President Joe Biden.
The June 4 meeting at 10 a.m. in the Russell Senate Office Building will discuss a “motion to authorize the Chairman to issue subpoenas for records and testimony to U.S. Government agencies and to individuals relating to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Crossfire Hurricane Investigation, the DOJ Inspector General’s review of that investigation, and the ‘unmasking’ of U.S. persons affiliated with the Trump campaign, transition teams, and Trump Administration.”
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 in 2016 and 2017 and for the bureau’s reliance on British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s deeply flawed dossier. Steele put his research together at the behest of the opposition research firm Fusion GPS, funded by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee through the Perkins Coie law firm. Recently declassified footnotes show the FBI was aware that Steele’s dossier may have been compromised by Russian disinformation and used it anyway.
Earlier this month, acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell released a declassified National Security Agency document containing a list of dozens of Obama administration officials, including Joe Biden, who were authorized recipients of information in response to “unmasking” requests that revealed retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn’s identity in surveillance intercepts. The former Trump national security adviser’s name was reportedly not masked in the FBI reports on his conversations with Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition period.
On Wednesday, DOJ spokeswoman Kerri Kupec announced that Attorney General William Barr selected John Bash, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas, to carry out a deep dive into the unmaskings to assist the broader review of the Trump-Russia investigators being conducted by U.S. Attorney John Durham.
And Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham is seeking broad authority to subpoena dozens of key officials in the Trump-Russia investigation, with the 53-person wish list including former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, fired FBI Director James Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and others.
Graham announced on Wednesday that his first hearing would include testimony from former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who signed the fourth and final FISA warrant against Page, appointed special counsel Robert Mueller, and, along with Barr, determined that Trump had not obstructed justice following the release of Mueller’s report.
Johnson, along with Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, told Grenell they were expanding the scope of their “unmasking” investigation requests to include information as early as January 2016. Graham sent a letter to Grenell last week asking him to declassify any unmasking requests made between Trump’s November 2016 victory and his January 2017 inauguration that revealed the identity of anyone in Trump’s orbit. And Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia asked for the intelligence reports related to Flynn’s conversations to be declassified.
It is likely now up to newly sworn-in Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to decide what to make public.
Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the committee, did not immediately return the Washington Examiner’s request for comment about Johnson’s push for an invigorated investigation into the Trump-Russia and unmasking sagas. Peters has opposed some of the investigations pursued by Johnson, including voting against the Republican-led committee’s successful issuance of a subpoena to Blue Star Strategies, a D.C. firm known for its Democratic clients, related to its representation of Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian gas company that gave Hunter Biden a lucrative position on its board from 2014 to 2019, while his father, Joe Biden, was leading the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy.
