Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham said the FBI should have stopped their investigation into the Trump campaign when it realized the Steele Dossier was likely phony.
“Let’s assume for a moment, it started out okay, it sure as hell didn’t end okay,” Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, said at a press conference following the release of an inspector general’s report on the origin of an investigation into collusion between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign.
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“I believe there will be no debate among minded people, particularly warriors, about how the system not only got off the rails but in my view became a criminal enterprise,” Graham said after the report touched heavily on a dossier by former British spy Christopher Steele that included unverified claims about President Trump’s actions in Moscow years before being elected president.
Graham, 64, said the FBI obtained evidence the Steele Dossier was fabricated and yet proceeded with the investigation and the effort to obtain permission from secret intelligence courts to surveil Trump campaign officials, including low-level campaign aide Carter Page.
Graham called it “a conspiracy to defraud the court and to trample on the rights of an American citizen, Mr. Carter Page.”
The inspector general report found numerous problems in the way the FBI obtained surveillance warrants but determined it was not politically motivated.
Graham said he assumes “for the sake of argument, there was a legal foundation” for the investigation but said, “it got off the rails.”
Graham delivered his response to the report after Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said the report proves the investigation is “valid and without political bias.”
Schumer said Trump’s claim that Trump was politically targeted is “conspiracy theory.”
