Senate Republicans moved on Thursday with an election year attempt to discredit the Trump-Russia investigation, voting to give themselves broad authority to summon dozens of national security advisers and several senior Obama administration officials, including an adviser Democratic President Trump’s campaign campaign, Joseph R. Biden Jr.
The party-line vote by the Judiciary Committee was the second time in a week that a Republican-led panel has moved to expand its reach, giving its president the power to unilaterally compel documents and testimonies related to the Russian issue. In both cases, Republicans are trying to taint investigators and reshape Trump and his campaign not as beneficiaries of Russian aid in 2016, but as victims of the dangerous reach of a Democratic government and police.
“We need to look closely at how the Mueller investigation got off track,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said before the vote, referring to the special attorney who conducted the investigation, Robert S Mueller III . “This committee is not going to stay on the sidelines and move on.”
With a 12-10 vote, with all Democrats opposing, the committee gave Graham the authority to issue subpoenas to more than 50 officials, including a who’s who of the top security advisers to the Obama and Trump governments. They include Denis R. McDonough, former chief of staff to President Barack Obama; Susan E. Rice, Obama’s national security adviser; and Steve Ricchetti, who was Biden’s chief of staff when he was vice president and is now the chief advisor to his presidential campaign. He may also require the cooperation of Attorney General William P. Barr and Christopher A. Wray, the FBI director, as well as other agents and employees involved in the case, known internally as Hurricane Crossfire.
Graham plans to hold public hearings in the coming weeks, not only highlighting errors and omissions of investigators who have already been discovered by a Justice Department inspector, but also creating a broader case for the public that some investigators have criminally abused their authorities . The inspector general, by comparison, said he found no reason to question the outcome of the special attorney’s investigation.
Many of the goals reflected those set a week ago by Republicans on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, which gave their president similar powers to demand documents and testimonies. The two investigations overlap and are being loosely coordinated, but Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, the president of homeland security, seems more focused on the actions taken by the Obama administration during the presidential transition in late 2016 and early 2017.
Democrats vehemently opposed the subpoenas on Thursday, accusing Republicans of using the committee as an election policy tool.
“Never has a president devoted the full weight of this committee’s resources to carrying out a fully partisan investigation after being instigated by a presidential campaign,” said Patrick J. Leahy, a Vermont Democrat and former panel chairman. He also noted that it was unusual for a Senate president to act so directly to use subpoenas, rather than trying to secure voluntary cooperation first.
Democrats complained that Graham was wasting the committee’s time when its members should debate urgent issues about policing and racism that are affecting the country, as well as the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Our country is facing three crises: a health pandemic, an economic catastrophe and systemic racism and police violence,” said Sen. Mazie K. Hirono, a Democrat from Hawaii. “But, instead of doing something concrete about these crises, this committee is asking for a subpoena authority to examine land that has already been covered.”
In a session that got tense at times, Democrats proposed more than a dozen changes in the subpoena. Some would have given authority to Democratic lawmakers to summon their own witnesses or compelled Graham to summon Trump associates involved in the Russia issue. Others instructed the committee to investigate Barr’s role in forcibly removing peaceful protesters outside the White House this month, so that Trump could be photographed holding a Bible in front of a nearby church.
Each failed on the party lines.
Graham promised Democrats that he would be willing to call Mueller or one of his deputies to testify if the minority party asked. Mueller testified before the House Judiciary Committee last year, but never appeared in the Senate to discuss his bulky report.
But Graham was agitated by the Democrats’ sharp criticisms of his work and reminded them that, as a minority, they had no power to stop him from moving forward.
“You are trying to stop me from doing something that I think the country needs to do and I will not be stopped,” he said.