It has been reported by Fox News that Republican Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham stated on Monday that he will be investigating allegations of abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) at the beginning of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe. Graham called Attorney General Bill Barr to appoint a second special counsel to look into the “other side of the story.”
Fox reports: Graham, R-S.C., made the comments during a press conference on Capitol Hill following the release of the findings in the Robert Mueller investigation, which did not uncover evidence of a Trump-Russia conspiracy in 2016. Graham and other Trump allies cited the findings to renew scrutiny of the probe’s origins at the FBI. The chairman said he’ll look into any alleged misconduct related to the Russia investigation on the part of the Justice Department, the FBI and the Democrats, but added that due to “the emotional nature of this” he believes a new appointment is necessary.
“I’d like to find somebody, like a Mr. Mueller, that can look into what happened with the FISA warrants, the counterintelligence investigation. Am I right to be concerned? It seems pretty bad on its face—but there are some people that are never going to accept the Mueller report, but by any reasonable standard, Mueller thoroughly investigated the Trump campaign. You cannot say that about the other side of the story,” Graham explained to the media on Monday.
“I hope Mr. Barr will appoint somebody outside the current system to look into these allegations, somebody we all trust, and let them do what Mueller did,” he went on, explaining that he has been asking for a second special counsel to be appointed since 2017 to look into “whether or not a counterintelligence investigation was opened as a back door to spy on the Trump campaign.”
“A counterintelligence investigation is designed to protect the entity being targeted by a foreign power…I still am at a loss as to why nobody went to President Trump to tell him,” the Republican said on Monday.
More from Fox: Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz is currently investigating any alleged misconduct related to FISA warrants delivered from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). The Justice Department and FBI obtained warrants in 2016 to surveil Trump adviser Carter Page. The status of the investigation, or a timeline of when the review will be complete, is unclear.
Meanwhile, Graham said the basis of his panel’s “deep dive” into alleged FISA abuses would be the unverified anti-Trump dossier and what role the document played, questioning whether it was “supplemental or outcome determinative.”