Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Lindsey Graham (R-SC), spoke with anchor Sandra Smith on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” Monday where he discussed the Department of Justice Inspector General’s upcoming report on FISA abuse.
Graham announced during the segment that he wrote a letter to Attorney General William Barr asking him to allow the public to see “as much declassification as possible” from the DOJ watch dog’s report.
Senator Graham told Sandra Smith on Monday, “I want the public to see the process in real-time. I want the FISA warrant applications to be revealed to the public as much as possible.” [Emphasized]
Following the Inspector General’s scathing report on former FBI Director James Comey, Graham explained, “What do we know from the Horowitz report regarding Comey? He was basically was accused of manipulating the system, ignoring rules and procedures that are in place regarding memos owned by the government to get an outcome. Comey wanted a special counsel appointed. He manipulated the system to get the outcome.”
“The question for me is, did they manipulate the warrant system to get a warrant against Carter Page? Did they manipulate the counterintelligence investigation against Papadopoulos? Did they manipulate the outcome of the Clinton investigation because they wanted her to win and Trump to lose? So I’m looking for a pattern of manipulation and bias and the question does that pattern rise to the level of criminally? We will soon here for the inspector general about the warrant application,” Graham said. (Continued Below)
As the next Inspector General report is set to be released reportedly in mid-September pertaining to FISA abuse, Smith asked Graham if he sees indictments coming.
The Senate Judiciary Chairman responded, “Possibly. So what did we learn from the first report about Comey? That he did not care about the rules in place; he wanted an outcome to make sure there would be a special counsel appointed. He leaked information inappropriately, even though it wasn’t classified.”
“The question for me is: did they manipulate the FISA court to get a warrant ‘illegally’ against Carter Page? They spent almost no time verifying the [Steele] dossier that was used to get the warrant. The dossier is unverified to this day,” he continued. (Continued Below)
“So what I’m looking for is accountability and responsibility. What should the price be for somebody who lies to the FISA court to get a warrant against an American citizen? We need to hold those accountable who watch us when it comes to getting warrants against anybody, regardless of the political party in question. I’m looking for a pattern here. Did they manipulate the FISA court? Did they manipulate the counter-intelligence rules against Papadopoulos? Did they let Clinton go because they have a political bias? Time will tell,” Graham said.
“Horowitz is a pretty neutral guy,” he said. “He was appointed by Obama and he slammed Comey because Comey ignored all the rules and procedures in place to get an outcome he desired. He wanted President Trump to be investigated by a special counsel. He took the rules and procedures in his own hands to get an outcome, the rules be damned,” he emphasized.
“The question is: did he do the same thing to the FISA court? Did they take the law in their own hands? Did they give to the court a document that was unverified? Did they swear under oath falsely that this was an accurate document justifying a warrant?” Graham asked.
He added, “I’m dying to hear about that because the rules and procedures regarding the leaked information is damning, but the manipulating of a court process illegal. Let’s just put this way: If they manipulated the FISA court system and nobody gets prosecuted, what would deter people in the future from doing the same thing? My goal is to make sure people never do this again, declassify as much as possible so the public can see what Horowitz was looking at.” (Video Below)
“And this is not revenge, this is just accountability,” Graham noted. [Emphasized.]
He concluded that he has not received a response from the Attorney General regarding his letter but added, “I’m very hopeful we’re gonna let the whole story be told, accountability and transparency is my goal. And I am sure criminality is gonna be looked at very hard by Mr. Durham and others.”
Watch:
