South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham is renewing his call for a second special counsel in the wake of the release of a GOP-drafted memo that alleges politically-motivated surveillance abuses.
“I like the FBI, I like the Department of Justice. But we need a special counsel to look at potential abuses of power,” Graham said during an appearance on a local NBC broadcast in Augusta, Georgia. “Somebody needs to watch the watchers.”
Graham reiterated concerns that he has long had about political bias at the Department of Justice and the FBI, that predate the House Intelligence Committee memo which was released Friday.
“I’ve been saying for four weeks now that the dossier was misused by the Department of Justice, that Mr. Steele, the guy who prepared the dossier was paid by the Democratic party and the Clinton campaign, that was never told to the court, that the FBI agents in charge of the Clinton email investigation hated Trump and had a bias against him and very much pro-Clinton,” he said.
But Graham stressed that the alleged abuses he wants investigated have “nothing to do” with the ongoing probe by special counsel Robert Mueller into Russian election interference.
“This all happened before he got involved,” he said.
Graham had advised against releasing the then-classified GOP memo without first having “somebody outside of the Republican-led Congress” examine its contents.
The memo alleges that federal officials relied on a dossier, compiled by ex-spy Christopher Steele, in a 2016 FISA application to monitor former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. According to the memo, that application and subsequent renewals do not note the funding for Steele’s efforts, or Steele’s “anti-Trump . . . ideological motivations.” The Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign hired Fusion GPS, which commissioned the so-called Steele dossier.
“The FISA warrant process needs to be looked at closely,” Graham said.
Graham on Friday also expressed concern about a connection between former Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr and Steele. Ohr’s wife was employed by Fusion GPS, the firm that commissioned the Steele dossier.
“He had a conflict, and he kept working with Mr. Steele,” he said.
The GOP memo alleges that “the Ohrs’ relationship with Steele and Fusion GPS was inexplicably concealed” from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) that approves warrants.
Graham has previously called for a special counsel to investigate allegations of political bias at the FBI and Department of Justice. The South Carolina senator raised concerns in June about reports that the FBI used the Steele dossier in its application to surveil Page. At the time, he and Judiciary chairman Chuck Grassley requested a range of documents about FISA-related actions taken by the FBI and DOJ during the Russia probe.
