Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham announced that he wants all the signers of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act applications and renewals targeting Carter Page to testify in January.
The October 2016 FISA application and January 2017 FISA renewal to surveil the Trump campaign associate were both approved by officials at the highest levels — then-FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. The April 2017 FISA renewal was approved by Comey and acting Attorney General Dana Boente, the only signatory still remaining in active government service. Boente began working as the Trump administration’s top lawyer at the FBI starting in January 2018. The June 2017 FISA renewal was approved by FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who also appointed special counsel Robert Mueller in May 2017.
Graham said he also plans to call in FBI Director Christopher Wray, who took over in August 2017 — after the FISA approvals but whose bureau has come under harsh criticism not just from the inspector general but also from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court itself.
“I’m going to call in Christopher Wray, and I’m going to ask him — what have you done internally to make sure this never happens again?” Graham said.
The South Carolina Republican made the announcement during a Senate press conference on Wednesday while Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz testified in front of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee about his investigation into Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuse by the Department of Justice and the FBI. The DOJ watchdog appeared before Graham’s committee last week.
“The first thing I want to do is discover the scope of the problem. So next January, I want to call everybody who signed a warrant application and ask them — why did we not know this? And try to explain to the public — how does this work? Do the people at the top of the chain just sign it and not look at any of the details? How did it get so off script?” Graham said to reporters, later adding, “I want to start with the people who signed the warrant and have them explain to me why they signed it.”
Horowitz concluded that the FBI’s investigation was filled with serious missteps and the concealment of exculpatory information from the FISA court. The DOJ watchdog lambasted the DOJ and FBI for 17 “significant errors and omissions” related to secret surveillance court filings targeting Page that relied on allegations contained within British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s salacious and unverified dossier.
The inspector general didn’t rule out bias tainting the actual carrying out of the investigation, saying he couldn’t determine whether the missteps were due to “sheer gross incompetence” or just “intentional misconduct.” Horowitz drew a distinction between the investigation’s launch and the subsequent troublesome investigative steps taken during it, concluding the Trump-Russia investigation, dubbed “Crossfire Hurricane,” was opened on a sound legal footing.
Graham also mentioned Horowitz’s ongoing audit of some of the roughly 1,000 annually approved counterintelligence and counterterrorism FISA investigations being carried out by the FBI.
“So when they do an audit of other FISA applications — is this a systematic problem, or is it pretty much limited to Carter Page?” Graham asked. “If it’s not a system problem, that tells me that the people in the Carter Page case got drunk with power, had a political agenda, and they acted upon it. If it’s a systematic abuse, it tells me the FISA process needs to be reformed dramatically. Either way, it’s bad.”
Graham said he’d likely be pursuing bipartisan FISA reform legislation too, mentioning possibly working with Sen. Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah, and Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Patrick Leahy of Vermont, both Democrats. Graham said he’d also speak with President Trump “and say FISA needs to be reformed, but if possible, we need to save the ability to monitor foreign entities attempting to influence our economy and our politics.”
“I think there’s a need for FISA, but FISA as it exists today will not be allowed to exist,” Graham said.
