“Simply put, this motion – and I’m sorry to say that, but I believe it – gives the president unbridled authority to go after Obama-era officials,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. “I cannot support this type of network authority to conduct politically motivated investigations.”
Democrats did not dispute that mistakes were made by Hurricane Crossfire’s investigation team, but noted that these issues were already being explored and argued that Republicans were using the mistakes – related to a warrant to tap a former Trump campaign advisor – to try to undermine all the special attorney’s investigation.
Graham’s committee predicted their strategy on Wednesday, when at their first public hearing on the matter, Republicans pressured Rod J. Rosenstein, the former deputy attorney general who appointed the special attorney in the Russian inquiry, to admit that there was not enough evidence in 2017 to continue the investigation. Rosenstein defended the investigation, but said he would not have signed a wiretap if he had known at the time that it contained factual errors and omissions.
Johnson has indicated that he is more interested in highlighting the origins of an opposition research dossier on the Trump and Russia campaign, assembled by a former British spy and cited by investigators. He will also focus on requests made by Obama administration officials to reveal the identities of unidentified Americans, who later discovered they were associated with Trump, mentioned in intelligence reports.
Johnson is separately investigating unfounded allegations that Biden’s son Hunter Biden corruptly helped a Ukrainian energy company to obtain favors from the Obama administration while his father was vice president.
Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, a member of the internal security panel, was the only Republican to criticize the investigations, saying he feared they were “politically motivated”.
“This committee’s inquiry is not entirely baseless,” said Romney, “but as you know, I believe there are far more pressing priorities that the committee must address, especially due to the trauma in our country caused by Covid-19, a destroyed economy , widespread protests against systemic racism, foreign cyber attacks and the list goes on and on. “