Sen. Lindsey Graham said the Justice Department watchdog’s report on how the FBI obtained Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants to monitor a former Trump campaign adviser shows there was a “criminal conspiracy” to defraud the court that approved the surveillance.
The South Carolina Republican, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he plans to ask Inspector General Michael Horowitz whether he agrees when Horowitz testifies on Wednesday about the findings of his investigation.
[Read: DOJ inspector general report on alleged FISA abuses]
“Here’s what I’m going to say to Horowitz,” Graham told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Monday. “Do you agree with me that in January 2017, after the sub source told the FBI and the Department of Justice everything in the dossier is a bunch of BS, that’s when it became a criminal conspiracy to defraud the FISA court.”
“Instead of telling the court that the primary sub source disavows the dossier, they told the court they were truthful and credible. At that point in time, the people at the Department of Justice and the FBI defrauded the FISA court, trampled on the constitutional rights of Carter Page, and continued a surveillance of a duly elected president unlawfully. … It became a criminal conspiracy. I want to know did [former FBI Director James] Comey know? Did [former FBI Deputy Director Andrew] McCabe know? What did they know and when did they know it. I want to know, did the Mueller team know about this?”
The FBI relied on a dossier compiled by former British MI6 agent Christopher Steele to obtain the warrants to monitor Carter Page, an American businessman suspected of being a Russian asset. Page was never charged with a crime as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, which was unable to establish criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, and he has denied being an agent for Russia.
Over the course of its investigation, the FBI sought to determine the reliability of Steele’s research, which included unverified claims about President Trump. Officials met with one of his primary sources in January, March, and May 2017 that “raised significant questions about the reliability of the Steele election reporting,” Horowitz’s report said.
The inspector general did not establish that political bias tainted officials’ actions over the course of the investigation, but some questions remain about certain individuals. Horowitz also determined there was sufficient cause for the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign, although the bureau made “at least 17 significant errors or omissions” in the Page FISA applications spanning from October 2016 to summer 2017.
The inspector general made recommendations for the FBI and the FISA process. FBI Director Christopher Wray ordered the FBI to take more than 40 corrective steps to address the inspector general’s recommendations.
Graham, who plans to do a “deep dive” into the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation and has also demanded accountability from the FISA court, said those who knew that Steele’s source cast doubt on the accuracy of Steele’s information should be the subject of a criminal investigation.
California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the FISA report shows that Trump’s claims of conspiracy against his campaign “are not valid.”
