Following the release of recently declassified documents, Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., says he believes the FBI showed a double standard in its investigations into reports of foreign interference at the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and now-President Trump in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election.
Calling it “the ultimate double standard,” Graham said that the documents reveal that leaders at the FBI sought to give the Clinton campaign a defensive briefing before it could pursue a FISA warrant related to a threat posed to the campaign by a foreign government.
But instead of doing the same for the Trump campaign, the FBI opened the Crossfire Hurricane operation and pursued a number of FISA warrants against people working with Trump’s campaign.
While Graham would not reveal which foreign government wanted to assist Clinton in getting elected, he said on 360aproko News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” that FBI leadership shot down a request for a FISA warrant until Clinton was briefed on the matter.
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“They never did to Trump,” Graham said. “As a matter of fact, not only did they not tell Trump, they used a generic briefing to spy on Trump.”
Crossfire Hurricane was the code name of the FBI counterintelligence investigation into links between Trump associates like George Papadopoulos, Michael Flynn and Carter Page and Russian officials and whether they worked “wittingly or unwittingly, with the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.”
“The FBI did the right thing by briefing Clinton and failed to do the right thing by never specifically briefing President Trump about their concerns,” Graham said in a statement released earlier on Sunday.
Earlier this month, Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., issued a subpoenaed to the FBI and Director Christopher Wray as part of its broad review into the origins of the Russia investigation.
The subpoena, obtained by 360aproko News, demands that he produce “all records related to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.”
“This includes, but is not limited to, all records provided or made available to the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Justice for its review,” the subpoena states, referring to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s review of abuses related to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
The subpoena also demands “all records related to requests” to the General Services Administration or the Office of the Inspector General for the GSA for “presidential transition records from November 2016 through December 2017.”
The subpoenas would cover all records made available to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz for his review of the Russia probe and alleged misconduct surrounding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant approvals to surveil members of the Trump campaign.
The committee also authorized subpoenas to the State Department for the production of records related to meetings or communications between State Department officials or employees with ex-British Intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who compiled the now-infamous anti-Trump dossier which served as much of the basis for the FISA warrant applications to surveil former Trump campaign aide Carter Page. The subpoenas would cover documents from June 2016 through January 2017.
