Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Lindsey Graham revealed in an interview with Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” that in 2018 Congress investigated Christoper Steele’s Russian record, and that the FBI lied to lawmakers about it.
Graham, RS.C., has led a supervisory investigation into the FBI’s conduct during the early stages of Russia’s investigation, with a focus on the unverified record, which was used to obtain an order from the Surveillance Act of Foreign Intelligence (FISA) to monitor former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page.
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With new recently released documents that have shed light on the early days of the investigation, Graham hinted at what the public can learn in the coming days.
“The FBI not only lied to the court about the reliability of Steele’s record, but they also lied to Congress, and that’s a separate crime,” Graham said. A report by the Justice Department Inspector General had previously revealed that the FBI made inaccurate statements in its FISA warrant requests.
The people who led the FBI at the time claim they didn’t know this when it happened, but Graham said he doesn’t believe it, given that there was a long note stemming from an interview with Steele’s under-source, who said the information gave him Steele was not reliable.
That secondary source was revealed to be Igor Danchenko, a fact his lawyer confirmed to The New York Times. Danchenko is a former senior research analyst at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC
“The Russian sub-source that had its base in the United States, not its base in Russia, said to Christopher Steele, ‘this is what I have, it is a bar talk, it is a rumor, it is insinuation, it is not really trustworthy “And what did Christopher Steele do with it? He made it into a Tom Clancy novel, sold it to the FBI, sold it to the FISA court, to get an arrest warrant for Carter Page,” Graham said.
“It is impossible for me to believe that McCabe and Comey were unaware of this 40-page memo,” Graham said, referring to former FBI Director James Comey and former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. “Anyone who knew that the Russian file was unreliable,” and continued to obtain an arrest warrant against Carter Page based on that document should go to jail for defrauding the court. “
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The FBI interview with the sub-source took place in January 2017, but the FBI continued to use the file in subsequent requests for orders after that.
“The FBI continued to lie to the court, obtaining new arrest warrants based on the record in April and June 2017. After they knew it was a pile of garbage, they continued to use it anyway,” said Graham. “Someone needs to go to jail.”
A big question, however, is who. Graham has been working to find out who among the FBI leaders knew what the sub-source was saying and when they knew it. To find out, he wants to call the person who wrote the 40-page memo to testify before his committee.
“I want to call the person who prepared the memo. I want to call the case agent who interviewed the sub-source for three days in January and ask, ‘Oh, by the way, did you tell anyone above you that the file is a piece of Russian disinformation?’ “
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As part of his investigation, Graham will have former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates appear before his committee on August 5. Documents that were declassified earlier this year showed that at a January 2017 meeting, before the FBI interview with the incoming National Security adviser. Michael Flynn, President Barack Obama was privy to the details of Flynn’s intercepted phone calls in December 2016 with a Russian ambassador. This apparently surprised Yates, who did not know about Flynn’s calls at the time.
Graham said she wants to ask Yates how Obama would have known about Flynn’s calls before she did. She also wants to know about Joe Biden’s role at that meeting.
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The notes allegedly written by former FBI official Peter Strzok that were released in June were interpreted by Flynn’s lawyers to show that it was then Vice President Joe Biden who suggested that the Logan Act be used as a reason to investigate Flynn. The Logan Act, which prohibits unauthorized persons from negotiating with foreign countries, has never been used successfully to prosecute anyone since it became law in 1799.
“Did you hear Vice President Biden mention whether or not Flynn may have violated the Logan Act?” Graham wondered. “If he said that, that’s contrary to what he’s been saying publicly.”
Gregg Re and Brooke Singman of Fox News contributed to this report.
