Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) wants to know if former President Barack Obama and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch were in on the decisions to spy on President Donald Trump’s campaign and lend credence to the phony dossier paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign that gave way to what became the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News on Tuesday, Sen. Paul said he is not sure if Obama or Lynch were personally aware of everything going—but demanded the production of documents that would prove it conclusively one way or the other.
“You know, I don’t know. But I think we ought to know,” Paul said when asked if this rose to the level of the former president and his inner circle of cabinet officials. “The thing is like I say, when they release the information—if the report is to come out, part of the release is they should have to release any documents from Loretta Lynch and any documents from the president that discuss or have information pertaining to the FISA warrant. If this went all the way up to president, to President Obama, yes we should know that. The only way you’ll get that is if Democrats really want to read all million pages of Mueller’s investigation and we tell them fine you’ll get that but only if we get all the information from the Obama administration on who was unmasking names, who was unmasking phone calls. Who was making the arguments for the FISA warrant and what were there arguments for it? Did President Obama get involved in it? Did Loretta Lynch get involved in it? So I think if we’re going to look at the Mueller report we should look at the origins of this Russian hoax investigation as well.”
Paul said there needs to be a full investigation into the origins of all of this, in particular what appears to be abuse by the Obama administration when it comes to using foreign surveillance wiretap powers.
“Yeah, and the way you’ll find out about it like I say is if they’re demanding the full report come out and all of that information come out then we should demand in exchange for that all of the paper, all of the information that was transforming how and why they got those FISA warrants should be made public too,” Paul said. “Everybody should be allowed to read who’s making the decisions and what were their arguments for why anybody should respect or believe this dossier that was paid for by the Clinton campaign. So I think that from my point of view the only way I’ll agree to release more information from this Mueller investigation is they also need to release information that points to who in the Obama administration agreed to start this Russia hoax.”
Paul also said that there are reforms that President Trump can make right now to ensure this never happens again. Trump, he said, could change the process by which the FBI accesses the FISA database to require the government to obtain a warrant to do so. Paul said he has discussed this idea with the president, and the president would not need Congress to enact such a reform now.
“One of the things that I’ve talked with President Trump several times about would be a reform where the FBI was required to go to a judge to get a warrant in order to search the FISA database,” Paul said. “The FISA database is a foreign intelligence database. We tap phones and listen to people all around the world. But when they talk to an American, you’re not supposed to be able to know who the American is without getting a warrant from a judge. An American has a right to the Fourth Amendment, and you’re not supposed to listen to Americans’ phone calls without asking a judge. We believe President Trump has the power to make this the standard rule for the FBI. We tried to pass this in Congress and we got very close, we didn’t get it passed, and that would be requiring the FBI to get a warrant. But we think the president could also, just as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, make it a rule for the FBI and say from now on if you want to listen to an American’s phone call or you want to use evidence from an American’s phone call to a foreigner from that database, that you have to ask a judge for permission before you can listen to it or use it for any means.”
When it comes to the media, Sen. Paul said they have “no shame” and to not expect widespread apologies for the two years of inaccurate misreporting and fake news that has dominated the “hoax” that was the Russia scandal.
“I think the left-wing media has no conscience. I don’t think that they’ll apologize,” Paul said. “I think the left-wing media has no shame. They’ve been trumpeting this thing for two solid years. People were saying ‘the president is going to jail,’ that he ‘absolutely colluded,’ that the president is a spy, we’ve even had some in the media do the same to me. I think they should apologize but do I think they will apologize? No. If you go on the left-wing television sites and watch them they’re still concocting new stories and saying things like ‘we need to know about his tax returns.’ It’s endless. But I think the American people are catching on. Ever since the Catholic high school student who was in Washington that the left-wing media made this fake story about him disrespecting Native Americans—ever since then I think people are catching on that the media doesn’t really care about the truth and is willing to concoct any story that fits their narrative. It’s the same thing with Trump. They hate Trump so they concocted this whole thing, and now they’ll move on to some other thing. So I think you’ll see rare if any apologies.”
Mueller concluded his investigation last Friday and submitted a report to Attorney General Bill Barr. The investigation, which lasted 675 days or 22 months, included the issuance of over 2,800 subpoenas, execution of about 500 search warrants, interviews of about 500 witnesses, and so much more. The investigation cleared President Trump, per Barr’s letter summarizing Mueller’s report to Congress over the weekend, on all allegations, including particularly whether the president or his campaign colluded with Russian efforts to interfere in the election in 2016 and whether the President obstructed justice when it came to the investigation afterwards.
Paul, also in his exclusive interview with Breitbart News after the president’s complete exoneration, called for several other senior Obama officials like former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA director James Brennan, and former National Security Adviser Susan Rice, to be compelled to testify before Congress about their roles in perpetrating this hoax on the American public.