OPINION — On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote on an authorization for Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to issue subpoenas to 53 individuals, most of them connected to the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation.
Among other things, Graham’s panel will look into how the FBI got into its probe of the Trump 2016 campaign’s alleged cooperation with Russians, the Mueller investigation, the prosecution of Michael Flynn and even the 2016 decision not to seek an indictment of Hillary Clinton for using a private server for emails while serving as Secretary of State.
“I’m going to do this through October,” Graham said of his proposed investigation during a June 5, interview on Fox News. He declared that the operation run by Special Counsel Robert Mueller was “full of corruption and illegal activities.” He complained that a warrant obtained from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to wiretap Carter Page was illegally obtained and “I believe corruption was at the top level,” indicating his belief in possible wrongdoing by then-FBI Director James Comey and then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe.
On June 4, the Senate Homeland Committee, in an eight-to-six party-line vote, gave its chairman, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), similar authority to issue subpoenas to a list of 33 individuals, 27 of whose names also appear on Graham’s list.
The two senators had apparently worked out a division of labor.
On Fox News on May 31, 2020, Johnson said, “We have a list of 35 people currently. It is very similar to what Lindsey Graham is going to be working on as well. …We'll let Lindsey Graham focus on the FBI, the Department of Justice of the corruption of the FISA process. We'll be listening very carefully to his hearings and probably calling in those witnesses for follow-up questioning.”
During a June 4, 2020, Judiciary Committee business meeting, Graham described his view of the worked out, informal agreement with Johnson. Judiciary would deal with Crossfire Hurricane and the FISA issues, while Homeland Security would handle FBI activities during the Trump transition and the unmasking [disclosure of Flynn’s name as participating in overheard phone calls or messaging with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak] which Graham attributed to “Vice President Biden.”
Ironically, the printed schedule describing the subpoenas and recipients that the Homeland Security Committee majority disclosed at its June 4, hearing appeared to overlap with what Graham had described as the Judiciary Committee investigation areas.
The Homeland Security schedule called for “all [FBI] records related to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” to include those sent to the Justice Department Inspector General. Also sought, apparently from the FBI, were records “related to requests to the General Services Administration (GSA) or Office of the Inspector General of GSA for presidential transition records from November 2016 through December 2017.”
Homeland Security’s schedule also sought records of meetings that Department of State officials or employees had with Christopher Steele, author of the dossier which Republicans claim was the basis of the FISA warrant.
One Homeland Security category was so broad it appeared to cover persons in all government agencies. It described seeking “any exchange of related [Steele] information between those [State Department] officials/employees and officials or employees of any other U.S. government agency, [emphasis added] including but not limited to the FBI from June 2016 through January 2017.”
Most of those listed for Judiciary and Homeland Security subpoenas already have been interviewed once or even twice on the very same subjects during previous congressional inquiries, or that of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
For example, Trisha Anderson, who was Principal Deputy FBI General Counsel during 2016 and 2017 and the first name on Graham’s list, was questioned on August 31, 2018, during the House Republican-led Joint Judiciary and Government Reform and Oversight inquiry into FBI investigative activities in the 2016 presidential election. A 227-page public transcript of her testimony shows she was questioned about decisions made by Comey and McCabe with regard to the FBI Russian investigation and even Comey’s decision not to prosecute Hillary Clinton.
She was also interviewed during the Justice Department IG inquiry. On page 347 of Horowitz’s 476-page report, it says, “Anderson told the OIG [Office of Inspector General] that using such a source [referring to Steele] operationally in a counterintelligence investigation is ‘an obvious selection because of those pre-existing relationships.’" That was almost the exact answer she gave in her August 2018 House joint committee testimony.
In addition, many on the Judiciary/Homeland Security lists were interviewed in the Mueller investigation, the Democratic-run House Intelligence Committee 2019 Investigation into Russian activities in the 2016 election as well a similar Senate Intelligence Committee investigation.
Furthermore, the Justice Department’s investigation into possible criminal activity surrounding the FBI Russian inquiry, started in 2019 by Attorney General William Barr and run by John Durham, U.S. Attorney for Connecticut, has been going over the same ground. Both Trump and Barr have hinted at the discovery of “troubling” and possible criminal activities.
Release of Durham’s investigative findings, with possible indictments or a report, has been another event promised to occur in the coming months, before the election.
At last week’s Senate Judiciary hearing, Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.), in announcing her opposition to giving Graham sole subpoena authorization, said the move grants the chairman “unbridled authority to go after Obama officials in order to bolster conspiracy theories and denigrate the president’s potential opponent, Joe Biden. I just want to put the facts on the table.”
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), in voicing his opposition, said Graham was turning the Judiciary Committee into a “political arm of the White House.”
This is hardly the first time congressional investigative hearings have been used in an attempt to influence a presidential election. Back in late September 2015, then-House majority leader Kevin McCarthy said the Republican Joint House Benghazi Committee had been effective at attacking then Democratic-presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton and driving her poll numbers down. The panel’s 800-page report, sharply critical of Clinton, was released at the end of June 2016, just weeks after she had clinched the nomination.
The final irony is that Republican senators in general have supported or been silent about Trump and his administration’s repeated refusal to respond to House committee requests and even subpoenas for testimony and records.
Graham, himself, last year described the House committees of starting investigations because they were bitter about losing the 2016 election. With the specific subpoena for Trump’s financial records, he was quoted in the Washington Post in May 2019, saying, “If I were Trump, I’d protect my family, and I’d protect my interests of the presidency and fight it out in court…Oversight’s one thing. Revenge is another.”
These are the same Senate Republicans, who opposed calling any witnesses in the impeachment trial of President Trump. Nonetheless, they are preparing to subpoena at least 60 individuals whose testimony, leaked or released to the public in coming months, could provide headlines aimed at influencing the Trump-Biden presidential campaign.
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