The Senate Judiciary Committee voted along party lines on Thursday to give Chairman Lindsey Graham the authority to issue subpoenas against dozens of Obama and Trump administration officials tied to the Russia investigation.
Democrats hotly objected to the South Carolina Republican’s effort to gain subpoena power during a debate that carried over from last week when a vote was postponed.
“I think we need to look long and hard at how the Mueller investigation got off the rails,” Graham said Thursday.
In response to Democratic critiques, he later said, “It would be a collaborative process, but you’re trying to stop me — and I’m not going to be stopped. … From my point of view, it sounds like you want to talk about everything except for what we should be talking about.”
One point of debate last week was whether to call special counsel Robert Mueller. Democrats urged Graham to call him as a witness as part of his inquiry into Crossfire Hurricane, the code name for the FBI’s Russia investigation, which was wrapped into Mueller’s effort. Graham warned them to “think twice” about it, but on Thursday, he said if Democrats want to call Mueller “or his designee” to appear before the committee, then “that’s fine with me.”
A focus of the inquiry is set on findings by the Justice Department’s independent watchdog, who conducted an audit of the FBI’s Russia investigation and found that it was initiated without the taint of political bias. But Republicans have raised questions about whether the inquiry was drawn out and subject to leaks as part of an effort to undermine President Trump.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s lengthy report, which was released late last year, criticized the Justice Department and the FBI for at least 17 “significant errors and omissions” related to the warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act against Trump campaign associate Carter Page in 2016 and 2017 and for the bureau’s reliance on British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s salacious and 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. Declassified footnotes show that Steele’s dossier may have been compromised by Russian disinformation.
“Anybody who knew about the problems with the dossier and continued to use it are good candidates to go to jail,” Graham said Monday.
“Once we find out that the Mueller investigation was run by people who hated Trump’s guts, dripping with partisanship, nobody seems to care. ‘Well, we can’t figure out if their hatred of Trump had any effect on their actions.’ Well, I don’t think you have to be that smart to put the puzzle together, but we’re going to keep trying,” Graham said last week. “And Mr. Horowitz said he didn’t know if the senior top-level officials at the FBI knew about the subsource disavowing the dossier, but that’s something you would want to know. It matters to me whether or not the number two guy at the FBI, Comey himself, knew the document was no longer reliable and kept using it. And you can’t answer that question — none of you can.”
Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein of California, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Dick Durbin of Illinois, and others were outspoken against Graham’s pursuit of the subpoenas, saying he was working to advance Trump’s personal agenda. They argued the committee should instead be focused on scrutinizing the Justice Department’s decision to drop the case against retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn and other issues such as the decision to call up the National Guard and federal law enforcement to protect the streets of Washington, D.C.
Feinstein called Graham’s actions “unprecedented” and said that “if the resolution passes, it will remove any role for the minority in issuing subpoenas.” Leahy called it a “wholly partisan” effort and a “low for this committee.” Durbin called the investigation “stacked” and biased.
Graham said last week he was also “going to find out why they kept going after Flynn when everybody who looked at Flynn said he shouldn’t be part of Crossfire Hurricane.” Graham said Thursday that once the case against Trump’s former national security adviser was finished, he was going to call for the Justice Department to come before the committee to explain why it moved to drop the case. He said at the time that the Democrats would be free to call witnesses, specifically mentioning John Gleeson, a retired judge who was picked to be an outside amicus curiae in the Flynn case.
“We’re gonna have to do that by ourselves,” the Republican chairman lamented, adding that the Democrats “couldn’t care less.” He said, “We’re gonna go wherever the evidence takes us and answer some basic questions about how it went so off the rails and try to explain to the public why the FISA court was so upset.” Graham said people went to prison because of the Mueller investigation and said there were some “good candidates” for prison for manipulating the FISA process.
Graham has listed 53 prominent figures connected to the Russia investigation who now may face subpoenas. The list does not include former President Barack Obama despite Trump’s urging.
Graham said his goal was to figure out whether it was just one or two low-level FBI agents who knew that “there was no there there” as they pursued Trump-Russia collusion or if higher-level people in the Obama administration concealed evidence.
The subpoenas, if issued, could demand documents, communications, and testimony from figures such as former FBI General Counsel James Baker, former FBI general counsel and Page FISA signer Dana Boente, former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, fired FBI Director James Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, FBI agent Joseph Pientka, former Obama United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power, former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice, Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson, fired FBI agent Peter Strzok, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and others.
The Republican-led committee rejected Democratic requests to subpoena Flynn, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, Mueller report figure and Russian businessman Konstantin Kilimnik, former Trump deputy campaign manager and Mueller witness Rick Gates, former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, former InfoWars D.C. bureau chief Jerome Corsi, longtime Trump associate Roger Stone, and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
The committee also rejected a Democratic amendment to obtain the unredacted Mueller report. But Graham said, “I can make sure that anyone can look at the unredacted portions — I don’t know why it’s redacted, but I’ll make sure we can look at it ourselves.”
