Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Attorney General William Barr is “pretty upset” with how the FBI handled the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s unauthorized private email server.
During an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he hopes Barr will appoint a special counsel to look into potential political bias.
“So it seems to me that she was interviewed not under oath. She had a couple of her staff people with her. People in her campaign were given immunity without anything in return. Nobody in the Clinton investigation went to jail for lying about the process because there was no process,” Graham told host Maria Bartiromo.
“I know Bill Barr pretty well, and he’s pretty upset about the way all this was handled,” he added, noting he’s not sure how Barr will act.
“I don’t know if he’s going to have a special prosecutor to look at the probability of criminal misbehavior,” Graham said. “I’m going to look at what happened from an oversight role. But I hope there’s a special counsel appointed to look at DOJ corruption and political bias, you know? Because Mueller did his job against Trump. Nobody’s really looked at the Clinton campaign, the FISA warrant abuse or the counterintelligence investigation for criminality yet and somebody should.”
Asked if he thinks the Clinton emails investigation will be reopened, Graham demurred.
“I’m not so much worried about retrying her, but I want to make sure that the public understands that she got away with something they wouldn’t get away with,” he said. “I think it’s important to understand that political bias probably drove the Clinton outcome, not the facts. I really don’t believe that Comey just took over the investigation from [former Attorney General Loretta] Lynch based on a tarmac meeting. I just want the American public to know that the standard used against Clinton is an outlier. It’s not the way business is done. And why did they choose that path? I think they had a political bias. They wanted Clinton to win, Trump to lose. And here’s the point. How could she win if the Department of Justice indicted her? I think that’s what drove the decision not to indict. They wanted her to win.”
Former FBI Director James Comey oversaw his agency’s inquiry into the unauthorized email server Clinton used while serving as secretary of state.
In a stunning public admission in July 2016, Comey announced his agency would not recommend criminal charges against anyone involved with Clinton’s private email network, even after finding that Clinton’s team was “extremely careless” in handling classified emails. Less than two weeks before the presidential election, in which Clinton was the Democratic nominee, Comey once again shook the political world when he announced the FBI was reopening its investigation into Clinton’s email server. The FBI closed the inquiry again just days before the election took place. This controversial move has prompted Clinton and her allies to blame Comey, in part, for contributing to her 2016 defeat.
Trump has long attacked Clinton for the email controversy. During the 2016 campaign the chant “Lock her up” became a mainstay at his rallies and during one of their debates Trump told Clinton she would “be in jail” if he was elected president.
A DOJ inspector general released last summer determined Comey was “insubordinate” and “affirmatively concealed” his intentions from Justice Department leadership during the investigation into into Clinton’s private email server. Although the report criticized FBI actions as unorthodox and at times improper, ultimately it concluded that this did not change the outcome of the Clinton email investigation. “[W]e did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that improper considerations, including political bias, directly affected the specific investigative decisions discussed below, or that the justifications offered for these decisions were pretextual,” wrote Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
Graham said during a Monday news conference that there would be continued investigations into the origins of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and potential bias in the Justice Department and FBI, including a look at FISA warrants.
Barr shared a summary of Mueller’s report to Congress last weekend that said Mueller’s team found no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Mueller also declined to determine whether Trump obstructed justice, and Barr said he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein concluded there was insufficient evidence to show the president committed a crime.
While Trump and his allies claim he is exonerated, Democrats who are unsatisfied with the summary are demanding to see the full report immediately by next week.
Barr said last week he expects a redacted version of Mueller’s report to be released in mid-April, “if not sooner.” The attorney general also volunteered to testify publicly after Mueller’s report is released to the public and said he is available to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 1 and the House Judiciary Committee on May 2.
