Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham praised FBI Director Christopher Wray for the bureau’s cooperation with the Republican’s investigation into the Trump-Russia investigators as the 2020 election looms.
After meeting with Graham in late August, Wray sent the senator a letter last week that was made public Tuesday in which the bureau highlighted “the many meaningful steps taken under Director Wray’s leadership to ensure the failures of Crossfire Hurricane are not repeated” and vowed that “the FBI continues to cooperate fully with this Committee’s investigation.” Graham’s office said that he “has continued to press the FBI for answers about how and why the Crossfire Hurricane investigation got so off track.”
“I very much appreciate this update from the FBI,” Graham said on Tuesday. “FBI Director Wray and his team are helping the committee perform vital oversight. I know Director Wray wants to repair the damage done by Crossfire Hurricane. He is working to rebuild the credibility of the FBI.”
Wray has faced criticism from a number of Republicans, including Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, who accused the director of slow-walking responses to information requests related to the Russia investigation, and President Trump, who said in May that “the jury is still out” on Wray. Attorney General William Barr has defended Wray amid the flurry of GOP critiques.
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a report in December that criticized the Justice Department and the FBI for at least 17 “significant errors and omissions” related to the FISA warrants against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and for the bureau’s reliance on British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s discredited dossier. Steele put his research together at the behest of Fusion GPS, which was funded by Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
Declassified footnotes from Horowitz’s report indicate that the bureau became aware that Steele’s dossier may have been compromised by Russian disinformation, and FBI interviews show Steele’s primary subsource undercut the credibility of the dossier.
Jill Tyson, the assistant director for the FBI’s office of congressional affairs, sent Graham a three-page letter on Thursday, detailing a meeting Wray had with the South Carolina Republican in which they discussed “the ongoing review of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation” and “our shared interest in protecting national security through the preservation of the FBI’s existing Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act authorities and the reauthorization of authorities that have lapsed.”
The FBI described how it has assisted Graham’s investigation of Crossfire Hurricane, which is the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into links between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia, including facilitating interviews of current and former FBI employees, providing hundreds of pages of documents to review in private, producing FBI interviews and briefing materials, and supporting the declassification of a number of key records. Tyson said the bureau would continue to cooperate in these oversight efforts.
“Director Wray has made it clear … that certain FBI personnel, at times during the 2016-2017 time period reviewed by the OIG, did not comply with existing policies, neglected to exercise appropriate diligence, or otherwise failed to meet the standard of conduct that the FBI expects of its employees — and that our country expects of the FBI,” Tyson wrote. “As Director Wray has publicly stated on several occasions, the failures of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation are unacceptable and unrepresentative of the FBI as an institution.”
Last week, the Justice Department announced the release of two new memos authored by Barr and supported by Wray, which it said would “empower the FBI to build a more robust internal compliance program” and “will ensure, among other things, the accuracy of FISA applications, as well as the active oversight of applications targeting federal elected officials, candidates for federal elected office, and their staffs.”
The FBI’s new letter also stressed that since Wray took over from fired FBI Director James Comey in 2017, “the principal senior executives involved in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation have left the FBI as a result of termination, resignation, or retirement,” and “every current FBI employee identified, even in passing, in the OIG Report was referred to the FBI’s Inspection Division and Office of Professional Responsibility for further review.”
The FBI told the FISA court it was working to “sequester” all the information obtained through the Page wiretaps, and Wray testified to Congress he was working to “claw back” information gleaned through the surveillance of Page. The FBI director also testified that the bureau likely illegally surveilled Page.
The FBI “is proceeding as quickly as reasonably and properly practicable to reach an appropriate disposition as to each employee,” Tyson wrote, adding that the administrative disciplinary reviews are “being conducted in a way not to interfere with the work of” U.S. Attorney John Durham as he finishes his investigation into the origins and conduct of Crossfire Hurricane. The FBI reiterated that it “has been — and will continue to be — fully cooperative with Mr. Durham and his team.”
Ex-FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who worked on the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server as well as on the bureau’s Crossfire Hurricane inquiry and special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, pleaded guilty to a false statements charge in Durham’s investigation in August. Clinesmith admitted he fraudulently changed a CIA email to state that Page was “not a source” for the CIA after being told by the agency that Page had been an operational contact for them.
