Lindsey Graham Responds to Pressure to Finally Investigate Russiagate by Inviting Rod Rosenstein to Testify

Boy that Lindsey. What a hero.

Of course, Graham is inviting one of the lesser figures to testify. He's not making waves by demanding Clapper, Brennan, Comey, McCabe, Baker, Strzok, or Page testify.

Inviting this one lesser figure to testify will give him six months of tough-but-folksy-sounding soundbites to offer up to Fox & Friends.

Not all heroes wear capes, you know.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will hear from former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as its first key witness in a series of hearings being held related to the Trump-Russia investigations and misuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

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"I am grateful to Chairman Graham for the opportunity to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about information that has come to light concerning the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act process and the FBI’s counterintelligence decision-making, as a result of completed inquiries by Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz and ongoing reviews by U.S. Attorneys John Durham and Jeff Jensen," Rosenstein said in a statement. "During my three decades of service in law enforcement, I learned firsthand that most local, state, and federal law enforcement officers deserve the high confidence people place in them, but that even the best law enforcement officers sometimes make mistakes and that some engage in willful misconduct."

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Rosenstein, whose memo on FBI Director James Comey was used by President Trump to justify Comey's May 2017 firing, also signed off on the fourth and final FISA request targeting Trump campaign associate Carter Page in June 2017. Republicans believe the FBI abused the FISA process to target people in Trump's orbit.

Horowitz's December report criticized the Justice Department and the FBI for at least 17 "significant errors and omissions" related to the FISA warrants against Page in 2016 and 2017 and for the burea''s reliance on British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s deeply flawed dossier. Steele put his research together at the behest of the opposition research firm Fusion GPS, funded by Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee through the Perkins Coie law firm. Recently declassified footnotes show the FBI was aware that Steele's dossier may have been compromised by Russian disinformation yet used it anyway.

Information unearthed by Jensen, the U.S. attorney for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, included FBI records touted by retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn's lawyer, Sidney Powell, as exculpatory evidence heretofore concealed from the defense team.

Supposedly, on June 4, Lindsey Graham will hold a vote to determine whether his committee will supeona testimony or documents from Comey and Brennan and 51 other individuals.

I emphasize "or documents" because all the relevant documents have already been destroyed, or will be in the ensuing days. You might as well subpeona Santa Claus.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will vote on June 4 whether to authorize subpoenas for documents and testimony from more than 50 current or former government officials, including James Comey and John Brennan, as part of the panel's investigation into abuse of the surveillance process during Crossfire Hurricane.

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Committee rules require Graham, a Republican, to either obtain consent from the top Democrat on the committee or to obtain a majority vote in order to issue subpoenas.

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Graham included the following list of individuals he plans to subpoena:

Trisha Anderson, Brian Auten, James Baker, William Barr, Dana Boente, Jennifer Boone, John Brennan, James Clapper, Kevin Clinesmith, James Comey, Patrick Conlon, Michael Dempsey, Stuart Evans, Tashina Gauhar, Carl Ghattas, Curtis Heide, Kathleen Kavalec, David Laufman, Stephen Laycock, Jacob Lew, Loretta Lynch, Andrew McCabe, Mary McCord, Denis McDonough, Arthur McGlynn, Jonathan Moffa, Sally Moyer, Mike Neufield, Sean Newell, Victoria Nuland, Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr, Stephanie L. O'Sullivan, Lisa Page, Joseph Pientka, John Podesta, Samantha Power, E.W. "Bill" Priestap, Sarah Raskin, Steve Ricchetti, Susan Rice, Rod Rosenstein, Gabriel Sanz-Rexach, Nathan Sheets, Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, Glenn Simpson, Steve Somma, Peter Strzok, Michael Sussman, Adam Szubin, Jonathan Winer, Christopher Wray, and Sally Yates.

We'll see. I think this is all fake.

Graham was McCain's butt buddy in the Senate, and McCain pushed this absurd conspiracy theory as political vegeance against Trump. And since then, Graham has claimed he really wanted to get to the heart of the scandal while doing nothing about it at all.

I do not think these facts are unrelated. I think Graham is yet another bad-faith double agent.

By the way: The SpaceX launch has been scrubbed, due to less-than-ideal weather.

I'd been holding the Graham post and preparing a space launch post -- and then, with 16 minutes left to go in the countdown, they scrubbed the launch.

Update: They'll try again, weather permitting, on Saturday. The weather problem today was some lightning in the area.

posted by Ace at 04:20 PM

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