Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham confirmed Wednesday that Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz will testify in front of the committee.
The South Carolina Republican predicted Horowitz will give “chilling testimony” in front of the committee about his highly anticipated report on potential abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act once the report is public.
Graham confirmed the widely expected hearing on the “Wake Up Carolina!” radio show with Ken Ard earlier this morning. Graham said he’d call for Horowitz to explain his report to the American public in an open session, though he did not specify exactly when it might happen.
“He will come to the committee to testify — the chairman — and we’ll make sure he gets all the time he needs to tell the country what happened,” Graham said. “He will be in public. We want to do all of it that we can in the open. We don’t want to have a classified session unless we have to.”
Beginning in October 2016 through June 2017, the FBI and DOJ obtained four FISA warrants and renewals against Trump campaign associate Carter Page. The 412 pages of redacted FISA documents released in 2018 show the DOJ and FBI made extensive use of the dossier compiled by British ex-spy Christopher Steele, which he put together in 2016 at the behest of the opposition research firm Fusion GPS. The Clinton campaign hired the firm through Marc Elias of the Perkins Coie law firm, and the campaign was briefed about Steele’s findings throughout the race.
Steele’s funding from Democrats was never revealed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
And newly released FBI interview notes with top DOJ official Bruce Ohr shed light on his role as a conduit between Steele and the FBI in 2016 and 2017, even after the bureau says it cut Steele off as a source for leaking to the media. Ohr told the FBI that Steele was desperate Trump not win and suggested some of Steele’s information may have stemmed from “Russian conspiracy theories.” Ohr’s wife, Nellie, worked at Fusion GPS, and Bruce Ohr passed her research along to the FBI too.
Graham said Horowitz would explain “the good, the bad, and the ugly” of his investigation’s findings and said the DOJ watchdog’s testimony would be “ugly and damning,” particularly with respect to the unverified. The senator specifically pointed to what he viewed as Steele’s flawed dossier targeting Trump, likely improper surveillance of Page, and the creation of an allegedly false “narrative” about former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos working with the Russians as examples of what Horowitz’s testimony would expose.
Graham also said once Horowitz finishes his report, it will be sent to the Justice Department for a review for any classified information.
“Here’s my goal, Ken — to take this report and make sure this never happens again,” Graham said. “Do we need to change the FISA warrant application? Do we need rules that we don’t have today to open up a counterintelligence investigation into a political campaign? Do we need to restructure the Department of Justice? These are the things that Congress will look at.”
Graham also said he’d spoken with Horowitz a couple days ago, and in explaining why the release of the report had been repeatedly delayed (Barr predicted earlier this year it would come out in May or June), Graham said every time Horowitz comes close to finishing “he finds something else.”
The report is now expected to be released in September or October.
