Graham Reacts As Barr Signals A Review Of Intel Community Conduct: ‘None Of This Adds Up’

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Senate Judiciary Chairman, Lindsey Graham (R-SC), joined host Sean Hannity Wednesday evening where he weighed in after Attorney General William Barr testified on Capitol Hill for before the Senate Appropriations subcommittee.

On Wednesday, Barr said he believes “spying did occur” on the Trump campaign in 2016, and he vowed to review the conduct of the FBI’s original Russia probe and the focus of a related internal review shifted to the role of a key FBI informant.

Sen. Graham has also vowed to get to the bottom of the “spying” and find out the origins of how it all got started.

“There’s no doubt there was spying going on Trump’s people and campaign, the question is: was it lawful?” The Senate Judiciary Chairman asked.

Graham explained that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) allows you to follow around people who think are working with a foreign government. He also noted that counterintelligence investigation by very definition is “surveilling people that you think are spying.”

Asked if it was lawful, Graham said, “If the warrant was based on the [Steele] dossier, that wasn’t lawful. And, I don’t know why they did not tell Trump about people on his campaign working with Russia if they really believed it.” (Continued Below)

Last year, Senators Graham and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) submitted a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Chris Wray requesting that they consider investigating Christopher Steele for lying to the FBI, which is a federal crime. Attached to that referral letter was an eight-page classified memorandum (“Grassley/Graham memo”) setting forth the basis for the referral.

Like the Nunes memo, the Senators’ letter contains allegations about how the FBI and Justice Department sought the FISA application of former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page. They suggested that the Justice Department and FBI may have lied to FISA court about Steele’s credibility and the salacious dossier.

As reported by the Heritage Foundation, in their referral memorandum, Grassley and Graham, who have reviewed all four FISA applications in their entirety, “as well as numerous other FBI documents relating to Steele,” make statements which, assuming they are true, tend to support what is contained in the Nunes memo. (Continued Below)

Specifically, the Grassley/Graham memo states that the Steele dossier “formed a significant portion of the FBI’s warrant application,” that the application “relied more heavily on Steele’s credibility than on any independent verification or corroboration for his claims,” and that the basis for the warrant “rests largely” on Steele’s credibility, per Herridge Foundation.

“I believe that the dossier is unverified to this day. I have a reason to believe it was the main reason the warrant was issued. I have a reason to believe the court was never told it was paid for by a political party and the person that prepared it, hated Trump. I believe that the counterintelligence investigation is questionable at best.” Graham said to Hannity.

“I still don’t know why they would not tell tell Trump ‘hey a couple people on your campaign may be working for the Russians,’ like they told Dianne Feinstein– that somebody in her office was working with the Chinese. None of this adds up! Barr is going to look at it, I’m going to look at it, Horowitz is going to look at it.” He expressed.

Graham added of obstruction of justice, “The Mueller team charged a lot of people with crimes, he has the ability to charge people with crimes. He chose not to charge Trump for a reason. He didn’t think he could prove a crime. He chose not to charge President Trump for a reason: not enough evidence.”

Hannity pointed out that former FBI Director James Comey went to Trump Tower in 2017, and he told president-elect Trump that the dossier was not verified, but it’s salacious. “So did Comey lie to Trump then, or did he lie on the FISA application? Hannity asked. “But, he lied on one of those occasions.”

“If the dossier is unverified, which I believe, how could you use it to get a warrant against an American citizen four times? If you really believed Trump’s campaign was being infiltrated by Russians, why didn’t you tell him, so he could do something about it? And how could Clinton get away with all of this, and not have anything– no charges at all, when the average person would probably be in jail now.” Graham added, “I think it has to do a lot with a political bias.” (Continued Below)

Former FBI agent Andrew McCabe admitted if there was not a dossier, the original FISA warrant could not have been obtained by the FBI.

McCabe, who ran the FBI after the president fired Comey, maintains he had sufficient grounds to authorize two investigations of the president himself — including whether he was personally acting on behalf of the Russian government and whether he was impeding the ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, reported Real Clear Investigations.

RCI further notes that in the days following Comey’s firing, McCabe quickly assembled his “Russia team” of investigators, led by Peter Strzok, who was accused of anti-Trump bias when he was later fired by the bureau. McCabe says his team recommended he order a full investigation of the president, which he says he approved on May 10.

On May 12, two days later, the FBI sought to reconnect with its old informant Steele.

McCabe testified that without the dossier, the original FISA warrant could not have been obtained by the FBI in October 2016. Bruce Ohr testified he first warned McCabe of Steele’s anti-Trump bias during an August 2016 meeting in the then-deputy director’s office. In British court papers, Steele himself confessed that his dossier was “unverifiable” and could never be used in a court of law. (Videos Below)

Lindsey Graham on holding the deep state accountable:

Sen. Graham questions AG Barr over spying:

(Related: Comey Slams GOP For Investigating The Investigators, Graham Fires Back: ‘Comey Will Get To Testify In The Light Of Day’)