Graham: “The Day of Reckoning is Here”

PREDICTS FBI SURVEILLANCE TO BE EXPOSED AS “COMPLETELY OFF THE RAILS”

by Sharon Rondeau

(Dec. 6, 2019) — On Friday night’s “Hannity,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) gave an in-person interview in which he said that the coming “FISA abuse” report by DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz to be released Monday will usher in “a day of reckoning.”

Graham made the comment after Hannity’s producer played a video clip of former FBI Director James Comey, following closed-door testimony one year ago to members of Congress on the conduct of the FBI and DOJ in 2016 toward the Trump campaign, stating to reporters that he believed all  procedures in obtaining FISA surveillance warrants on former Trump campaign aide Carter Page were followed “in a thoughtful, responsible way.”

“The boomerang of justice is now in full swing,” Hannity said to Graham, referring to the separate criminal investigation being conducted by U.S. Attorney John Durham under the direction of Attorney General William Barr into the origins of the Trump-Russia “collusion” narrative, which yielded no evidence of such a conspiracy among any American and Russians to affect the 2016 election.

An unverified “dossier” compiled by British citizen Christopher Steele was used as the bulk of “evidence” the FBI presented to the FISA court to obtain four successive warrants on Page, who was ultimately never charged with a crime.  Page has publicly claimed to have been the recipient of death threats since his surveillance became known and that the FBI appears not to have investigated his claims.

The dossier was paid for by the Clinton campaign and DNC, Hannity pointed out, a detail not made clear to the court in the warrant applications.  The surveillance of Page, which lasted a year, appears to have been part of an unprecedented FBI counterintelligence investigation into a political campaign, in this case Donald Trump’s, which some in Congress say had multiple targets.

Graham has long suggested that Horowitz’s report will identify wrongdoing on the part of FBI and DOJ officials and on Friday told host Sean Hannity, “Monday night maybe I’ll be on your show; play that clip, and let’s compare that clip to what Horowitz found about the FISA warrant process, and the day of reckoning is here.  I haven’t been briefed about the details, but I believe it shows the system completely off the rails for a long period of time, and that you really have to hate Trump not to be upset about what the Department of Justice and the FBI did, and there are some things that they did, I believe, that are really dangerous to democracy.”

Hannity interjected that Graham would appear on his show Monday night.  He later added, however, that the report will be put “in context” when Horowitz testifies to the Judiciary Committee two days later, on December 11.

Graham said he “supports accountability” and that he “expects the [FISA] court to make sure it never happens again.  If the counterintelligence investigation was the sham that I think it is, we need to make sure that never happens again by creating rules.”

He continued:  “I want to know:  did Obama know?  Did Obama know that President — candidate Trump’s campaign was being surveilled by our government…?”

When Hannity said that next week “will be a big week,” Graham chuckled.