U.S. Senate judiciary panel head wants special counsel to look at origins of Trump probe
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...3dj?li=BBnb7Kz
WASHINGTON, March 25 (Reuters) - The Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said on Monday he will ask Attorney General William Barr to appoint a special counsel to look into the origins of the probe of whether President Donald Trump's campaign conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 election.
A day after the attorney general said the report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller found that nobody from Trump's campaign conspired with Russia, Senator Lindsey Graham said "we will begin to unpack the other side of the story."
He said it was time to look at the Clinton campaign and the origins of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant for former Trump adviser Carter Page, which was based in part on information in a dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer who co-founded a private intelligence firm.
Republicans lawmakers have contended the FBI made serious missteps when it sought the warrant to monitor Page in October 2016 shortly after he left the Trump campaign.
Republicans said the FBI failed to disclose that Steele was hired by a firm funded by Democrats to do opposition research on Trump's business dealings.
However, Steele was initially contracted by FusionGPS, a Washington-based political research firm, to investigate Trump on behalf of unidentified Republicans who wanted to stop Trump's bid for the party's nomination.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-SC, speaks during a press conference on US Attorney General William Barr's summary of the Mueller report at the US Capitol in Washington, DC on March 25, 2019. Graham said he planned to ask Barr when they talk on Monday to appoint a special counsel to investigate the FISA matter, which is already being probed by the Justice Department's internal watchdog.
"What I want to do is see if he'll appoint a special counsel," Graham said at a news conference. "I'd like to find somebody like a Mr. Mueller that could look into what happened with the FISA warrant, what happened with the counterintelligence investigation."
Graham said he wants Barr to appear before the Judiciary Committee to discuss Mueller's report, which concluded Russia did attempt to intervene in the election on Trump's behalf.
"What's next, I hope, will be that he will come to the committee (and) release as much as possible of the Mueller report," Graham said.
On Sunday, Barr said in a four-page summary that Mueller's team had not found evidence of criminal conspiracy between Trump's campaign and Russia in the 2016 election and had left unresolved the issue of whether Trump obstructed justice.
Barr, a Trump appointee who took office last month, said he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein concluded that the evidence did not justify bringing obstruction charges.
There has been a great deal of "discussion" about the Steele dossier and whether the FISA warrant was legal. Graham has the power to investigate and refer to a now neutral politically FBI for charges and referral for prosecution if wrong-doing is found.
DPST's Nadler and Schiff are continuing their merry way to investigate "Russian collusion". American voters will see this as a fraud and waste of money.
DPST's involved will be very nervous about this turn of events - Shoe is on the Other Foot now!!!!
An investigation of Nadler and Schiff - who are often quoted "We have clear evidence of obstruction" - for McCarthy tactics is in order. I want to see the "evidence" they, Pelosi, Schumer, and others have been waving in their little McCarthy-type hands.
Show Us the Beef!!!!!
DPST's be very nervous - the house of Cards may come falling down down down.
Sen Lindsey Graham - Investigate Origins of Mueller probe
