Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said in a recent interview that he believes officials from the Obama administration are opposing the declassification of documents relating to the origin of the Russia probe because they are afraid of being “exposed for taking the law in their own hands.”
“I’m insisting that we get to the bottom of this. I want all the documents around the FISA warrant application released. I want to find out exactly how the counterintelligence operation began. I think transparency is good for the American people,” Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told Wallace.
He added that he doesn’t think any Democrats care about whether the FBI and DOJ had misled the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court when obtaining warrants to surveil Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
“I wish some Democrat would come forward to find out if the FISA court was defrauded by the FBI and the Department of Justice,” Graham said.
Graham, without identifying names, said that the people are opposing because they are “worried about being exposed for taking the law in their own hands.”
“It doesn’t surprise me that the people we are looking at, they don’t want transparency,” the senator said. “We’re not compromising national security here. We’re trying to create a system to make sure this never happens again by shedding light on what happened with the FISA warrant process, the counterintelligence investigation. Did they have a lawful reason to surveil President Trump’s campaign? Did they lie to the FISA court?”
“Every American should want to find that out,” Graham added.
Also in the interview, Wallace asks Graham two questions that Brennan raised as concerns in his remarks during the MSNBC interview.
“Here are the two questions that [critics] raised: one, can Barr be trusted with these secrets? And two, can he be trusted not to cherry-pick the information to make a case for the president?” Wallace asked.
“Well, I think he can be trusted. I’m going to look at this. You know, nobody doubted my trust or my ability to be fair when I supported Mueller,” Graham responded.
Barr is currently looking at the origins of the Russia investigation and surveillance activities against the Trump campaign and associates during the 2016 presidential election.
Trump said his decision to declassify the information to “help ensure that all Americans learn the truth about the events that occurred, and the actions that were taken, during the last Presidential election and will restore confidence in our public institutions.”
