Lindsey Graham: Senate Will Investigate FISA Abuse, Surveillance of Trump Campaign

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said his committee will start to investigate the FBI and DOJ’s potential abuse of the FISA warrant process and surveillance of the Trump campaign and called for a special counsel to investigate these potential abuses of power during a press conference on Monday.

After noting that after special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation confirmed that the Donald Trump campaign did not collude with the Russian government, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman said he wanted to talk about the “other side of the story,” which includes possible abuse of the FISA warrant process to spy on the Donald Trump campaign by DOJ and FBI officials.

Graham said, “The FISA warrant issued against Carter Page was based on a dossier prepared by Christopher Steele is at a minimum disturbing. Whether or not it is illegal, I don’t know. So I’m going to get answers to this. No one seems to care it seems to be only Republicans that do and that’s sad.”

“If the shoe were on the other foot it would be front page news—the double standard has been striking and frankly disappointing,” Graham said.

Sen. Graham said that that he has called for a special counsel to investigate these claims since the end of 2017. Graham said he will investigate “whether or not a counterintelligence investigation was opened up regarding the Trump campaign as a backdoor to spy on the campaign.”

The South Carolina Republican said that he will look at Fusion GPS’ role in the 2016 presidential election, potential FISA abuse, and more.

“I will be doing oversight to try to put this puzzle together,” Graham said.

“To those who were abusive of the process in 2016 on the other side, you haven’t had much scrutiny, but that’s coming,” Graham added.

The chairman then said that he hopes Barr will appoint a special counsel to investigate these claims.

“What I hope Mr. Barr will do is what I hope for the country’s sake, appoint somebody outside of the current system into these allegations somebody we all trust, and let them do what Mr. Mueller did,” Graham concluded.