Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., tore into the media’s “horrendous” coverage of the federal Russia investigation on Wednesday.
Graham made the comment as he discussed how his committee will be looking into how the Mueller investigation got started after Attorney General William Barr determined the Mueller report exonerated President Trump of all Russia collusion allegations.
During an interview with CNN, the lawmaker said the mainstream media “missed a whole big story about how it off the rails” in regards to the controversial documents that underpinned the investigation.
“I’d say that’s stupid. If the shoe were on the other foot, if the Republican Party had hired Steele to investigate Clinton, created a document that was a bunch of garbage against Clinton, that got a warrant against a Clinton adviser, everyone would be up in arms,” Graham said.
.@LindseyGrahamSC tells @CNN the media did a “horrendous” job covering Mueller and missed a big story about how the investigation got started in the first place.
“The congress’ job is to find out was a FISA warrant issued against an American citizen based on a bunch of garbage.” pic.twitter.com/fqhkIMGbwp
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) March 27, 2019
Graham was referring to British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s dossier containing unverified claims about Trump’s ties to Russia, which was used by the FBI to obtain warrants to spy on onetime Trump campaign aide, Carter Page. Republicans alleged the FBI may have misled the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and Graham has reignited an investigation into potential abuse.
Graham told CNN there was a double standard in how the investigation into Trump was approached, highlighting how Senate Judiciary ranking member Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., was warned about a Chinese spy working in her Washington D.C. office.
“Why did they never go to Trump and say, ‘You may have some people in your campaign working with the Russians?’ when they went to Dianne Feinstein and said there’s someone in your office we think is working with the Chinese,” Graham said.
