WASHINGTON – Senate Republicans reiterated unproven allegations of corruption and prejudice in the FBI on Tuesday, attacking former acting bureau director Andrew G. McCabe during a contentious Judiciary Committee hearing.
The hearing, led by Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a close ally of President Trump, was a retelling of the perceived injustices that the President and his supporters have magnified during the investigation into Trump’s 2016 campaign ties with Russia. They included unsuccessful apps to tap former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page, treatment of former national security advisor Michael T. Flynn and a notorious dossier on alleged Trump-Russia connections.
Senator John Cornyn of Texas accused the FBI of being “dishonest”, while Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee said the bureau had a “culture of corruption and cover-up”. Senator Josh Hawley, Missouri, described the investigation as the “biggest scandal in FBI history”
McCabe has repeatedly rejected Republican claims that the FBI’s actions were politically motivated.
“Let me be very clear: we don’t open a case because we like one candidate or we don’t like another,” he said in his opening statement. “We did not open a case because we intended to strike a coup or overthrow the government.”
McCabe, who testified remotely because of the pandemic, acknowledged serious FBI errors in Page’s listening requests, one of which he signed. He said he would not have approved knowing what he has learned since then. “We are all responsible for the work that involved FISA,” said McCabe, referring to requests made under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
A report by the Justice Department’s inspector general released last December found blatant errors and omissions in Page’s wiretapping requests in the months after he left the Trump campaign, based on investigators’ suspicions about his ties to Russia.
Republicans put pressure on McCabe over who in the FBI was to blame for the problems. They mistakenly insisted that no one had been held responsible; the inspector general’s report blamed it, singling out an FBI agent designated as “primarily responsible for some of the most significant errors and omissions”.
FBI Director Christopher A. Wray said the line officials who played a role in listening to Page’s requests were referred to the bureau’s professional responsibility office, his disciplinary arm.
The inspector general’s report also concluded that the FBI had sufficient reason to open the investigation in Russia and that investigators acted without political bias in doing so.
Democrats on the committee made it clear that they had little patience with Graham’s investigation, believing it was a waste of time, as they accused Attorney General William P. Barr of politicizing the Department of Justice.
“This is a desperate and last-minute attempt to deal with President Trump’s complaints about that election,” said Sen. Richard J. Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, accusing the Republican-led committee of holding another “party hearing to promote theories of President Trump. “
Before the hearing began, Trump aimed at McCabe, a frequent target. “Republicans, don’t let Andrew McCabe continue to get away with totally criminal activities,” said the president wrote on Twitter. “What he did should never happen to our country. FIGHT FOR JUSTICE! “
During the hearing, Mr. Graham repeatedly accused the FBI of treating Mr. Trump unfairly, saying that he should have been warned of Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 elections on his behalf.
Graham pointed to a document recently released from unverified information that suggested that Russian intelligence had obtained information that Hillary Clinton had approved a plan for her 2016 campaign to “provoke a scandal” against Trump, linking him to the Russian hackers he invaded. Democratic servants.
Although Trump’s allies promoted the document, other officials rejected the information after evaluating it, including special lawyer Robert S. Mueller III and the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee.
McCabe said he had never seen the document before and it was not clear to him whether the information alluded to criminal conduct.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat and former federal prosecutor, defended the FBI for not investigating the allegation, noting that even information related to a possible Clinton campaign strategy was not a crime, but typical politics.
Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, also reported that advisers to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. were talking to foreign leaders and compared this to the FBI scrutiny of Flynn in connection with his December 2016 calls to the Russian ambassador during Mr. Trump’s transition.
Mr. Cruz demanded to know if Mr. Biden and his team were violating the Logan Act, a 1799 law that says it is a crime for ordinary people to interfere in diplomatic relations between the United States and foreign governments. Mr. Cruz finally pointed out that the Logan Act is widely considered unconstitutional, saying that Biden, therefore, was not violating it, but that it was illegitimate to “pursue” Mr. Flynn for the same thing.
In a heated exchange with Cruz, who repeatedly interrupted him, McCabe said that “there were no discussions about the Logan Act” in relation to Flynn, leading Cruz to suggest that he could be committing perjury. But with permission to complete his response, McCabe clarified that the agents opened the Flynn counterintelligence investigation on the basis of something else – the suspicion that he could be a channel between the campaign and Russia.
Notes released in connection with the Justice Department’s attempt to drop Mr. Flynn’s charge, despite his guilty plea for lying to the FBI about his talks with the Russian ambassador, showed that there were discussions about the Logan Act in 2017.
In addition, on Tuesday, a federal judge unveiled a set of search warrants in connection with the Flynn case in response to a media request. They showed that in September 2017, when Mr. Mueller’s bureau and office sought access to Trump transition devices and email accounts, he cited the Logan Act and false statements to a judge.
“The FBI is investigating whether Flynn has corresponded with foreign government officials without the authority of the United States, with the intention of influencing the conduct of foreign governments, in violation of” Logan Law, “and whether Flynn has made materially false statements and omitted facts materials to the FBI regarding its communications with foreign government officials, ”he said.
At the end of the hearing. Graham ignored Democrats’ claims that his investigation was futile. “We will continue to dig,” he said.
Charlie Savage contributed reporting.