PREDICTS DOJ INSPECTOR GENERAL REPORT READY “WITHIN WEEKS”
by Sharon Rondeau
(Aug. 18, 2019) — At approximately 10:26 a.m. EDT on “Sunday Morning Futures,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham told host Maria Bartiromo that the DOJ’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, will likely complete his long-running investigation into the circumstances whereby FISA warrants were obtained on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page “within weeks” rather than “days” or “months.”
Graham said he expects Horowitz will send the finished report to the Justice Department for a classification review, although he did not predict a time frame for declassification.
Graham said he wants as much as possible of the report to be released publicly. “I want it all out,” he told Bartiromo, so that Americans can reach their own conclusions.
Horowitz has been investigating the conduct of the FBI and Justice Department over the applications for the Page warrants, which included as “evidence” the now-infamous Trump-Russia “dossier” compiled by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele. Graham told Bartiromo that the contents of the dossier remain unverified “to this day.”
The report’s conclusions will have serious ramifications for the DOJ and FBI’s conduct, Graham indicated.
FBI regulations require that evidence provided to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) for a surveillance warrant on an American citizen must be sworn to under oath as “verified” to the best of the FBI’s ability.
On September 23, 2016, an article was published by Michael Isikoff of Yahoo! News informing the public that Page’s alleged “ties” to Russia were under scrutiny. Page was never charged with a crime, and Isikoff later admitted that the dossier’s contents are not verified.
Steele was determined to prevent Trump from becoming U.S. president, government documents released over the last several months have shown. In 2016 and 2017, Steele was in contact with DOJ official Bruce Ohr, who relayed Steele’s uncorroborated allegations about Trump’s involvement with Russians to the FBI on at least a dozen occasions, FBI interview summaries show.
Transcripts reportedly exist, according to Graham and former Rep. Trey Gowdy, apparently demonstrating that former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos indicated in 2016 that he had no Russian contacts and that it would be “treason” if he were to have forged connections with the Russian government.
That information was withheld from Papadopoulos’s defense team, Papadopoulos wrote in his book, “Deep State Target,” after he was charged with lying to the FBI during interviews about alleged connections between the campaign and Russians.
In October 2017, Papadopoulos accepted a plea agreement with the Justice Department for allegedly lying to the FBI about his 2016 contacts with Joseph Mifsud, who investigative reporter John Solomon later said on the show was described by his own attorney, Stephan Roh, as a Western intelligence source. In April 2016, Mifsud told Papadopoulos that “the Russians” had derogatory information on Hillary Clinton, likely in the form of her emails, a conversation which appears to have sparked the entire “collusion” narrative and FBI/CIA/foreign intelligence operation into the Trump campaign.
In response to Bartiromo’s question as to who the “mastermind” of the Trump-Russia “collusion” narrative is, Graham responded, “You know, I really am very curious about the role the CIA played here. We know that the FISA warrant application was based on a dossier prepared by Christopher Steele who was biased against Trump that was unverified; that’s one problem. But this whole intelligence operation: what role did the CIA play? Who knew about this in the White House? Here’s a question: Was President Obama briefed on the fact that they were opening up a counterintelligence investigation against the Trump campaign? I’d like to know that.”
Regarding whether or not Papadopoulos will testify to Graham’s committee, as Bartiromo said Papadopoulos suggested to her during an appearance, Graham told Bartiromo, “A guy like Papadopoulos, yeah, I’d like to call him. I’d like for him to tell the world what kind of interactions he had, where he had them, and what did he say about working with the Russians and is there verificaiton that he told the informants early on that to work with the Russians would be treason and a crime; I would never do that; if he did say that and they went ahead anyway, that raises a lot of concerns.”