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‘More than smoking guns’: Lindsey Graham calls for new Special Counsel to probe Hillary emails, FISA abuse

by Frieda Powers

Sen. Lindsey Graham blocked a resolution that unanimously passed in the House to release special counsel Robert Mueller‘s final report to the public.

The South Carolina Republican and Judiciary Committee chairman objected to the nonbinding resolution after a refusal by Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer to amend it by calling for a new special counsel to be appointed to investigate the Justice Department’s misconduct in handling the Hillary Clinton email probe and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act applications.

“There are a lot of Americans,” Graham said from the Senate Floor Thursday, “that believe what happened in 2016 with the Clinton e-mail investigation and the FISA warrant against Carter Page showed corruption at the highest level of government.”

“I agree that there’s more than smoking guns here. There is overwhelming evidence that somebody outside the political system should look into. I can’t find anybody much on the other side who seems to give a damn about that,” Graham continued.

He noted that while he supported Mueller’s probe into alleged Russian collusion in the 2016 election, he had a major problem with the way Clinton-related scandals were not addressed.

“Was there two systems of justice in 2016? One for the Democratic candidate and one for the Republican candidate?” Graham asked.

“How in the world could the investigation get so off track that the two people in charge of it openly talked about making sure that there was an insurance policy against Trump if he won, and openly exposed support for Clinton, how do you interview Clinton the way she was interviewed?” The GOP senator asked.

“If the shoe were on the other foot…All hell would pay,” he said. “Any American out there who did what Secretary Clinton did, you’d be in jail now.”

“The question I want to know is, does anybody other than me believe that?” Graham added, calling for someone “to look at what happened on the other side and find out if the FBI and the DOJ had two systems, one supporting the person they wanted to win, and one out to get the person they wanted to lose. Some of these people have been fired for lying and it’s now time to have a special counsel looking all things 2016, not just Trump.”

Schumer had called for unanimous consent on the resolution in the Senate just hours after it passed in the House with a 420-0 vote, The Hill reported.

“There is no good reason, no good reason that the special counsel’s report should not be made public. The American people are overwhelmingly for the report being made public. They have a right to see it. No one should stand in the way of that,” the New York Democrat said from the Senate floor.

After Graham’s objection, Schumer accused his colleague of using a “pretext” to block the Mueller resolution which would release to the public any of the reports Mueller provides to Attorney General William Barr, except for classified material. The full report would also be released to Congress.

“I have absolutely no idea why a member of this body would object to this basic level of transparency whatever their concern or other issues,” Schumer said.

Though Mueller has not indicated anything publicly about the timing of a report, speculation has mounted following the recent departure of some of the team, including prominent prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann, who headed up Mueller’s case against former President Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

HERE’S WHAT YOU’RE MISSING …

 

Frieda Powers

Frieda Powers

full story at

https://www.bizpacreview.com/2019/03/15/more-than-smoking-guns-lindsey-graham-calls-for-new-special-counsel-to-probe-hillary-emails-fisa-abuse-733336?utm_campaign=bizpac&utm_content=Newsletter&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_source=Get+Response&utm_term=EMAIL

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