Sen. Lindsey Graham said the legal foundation for special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation is “crumbling.”
Graham, who is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released to the public on Wednesday a less-redacted memo, written by then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in August 2017, showing the scope of Mueller’s mandate to investigate four Trump campaign aides and associates and their ties to Russia, as well as other allegations.
The South Carolina Republican made the case on Fox News host Sean Hannity’s show that the second of three scope memos is further evidence that Mueller should never have been appointed to the role in the first place.
“The legal foundation to justify Mueller’s appointment, in my view, does not exist,” Graham said. “That’s why this memo is so important.”
The first scope memo was part of Mueller’s appointment as special counsel in May 2017, after President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey. The counterinvestigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, which began in the summer of 2016 and was code-named Crossfire Hurricane, was wrapped into his effort as Rosenstein directed him to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.”
The second memo contains the specific allegations Mueller’s team was directed to look into related to former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, Trump’s first national security adviser Michael Flynn, and two campaign associates: Carter Page and George Papadopoulos. The third scope memo, which was authored by Rosenstein on Oct. 20, 2017, has not been declassified yet, but Mueller’s report shows it expanded the breadth of Mueller’s inquiry to examine other Trump associates.
Graham pointed out that claims in the second memo against Page reflected information found in British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s dossier and noted that months before the memo was written, a subsource “disavowed” the dossier, and the FBI knew it.
The senator also referenced recently released notes from the FBI’s investigation into Flynn, which indicated the bureau was ready to close its case against the retired lieutenant general in early January 2017 after finding “no derogatory information” on him but was abruptly stopped by now-fired FBI agent Peter Strzok and others in the FBI’s leadership.
In addition, Graham noted that Papadopoulos denied Trump-Russia collusion, comments which were recorded by an FBI source but never relayed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as it approved warrants to wiretap Page.
“There was no legitimate reason to believe any of these four were working with the Russians on Aug. 2, 2017. Therefore, the entire Mueller investigation was illegitimate to begin with. That’s very important,” Graham said.
Mueller’s 448-page report, released in April 2019, said the Russians interfered in the 2016 election in a “sweeping and systematic fashion,” but it “did not establish” any criminal conspiracy between Trump’s campaign and Russia. While convictions did emerge from the inquiry, no one was ever charged with Russia collusion.
