Lindsey Graham is ready to go on offense.
Now that President Donald Trump's "no collusion" claims have seemingly been vindicated by special counsel Robert Mueller, the Senate Judiciary chairman has plans for an aggressive oversight probe of his own. He's even hoping to convince the attorney general to appoint a second special counsel.
The South Carolina Republican announced Monday he will investigate whether the Justice Department and FBI influenced the 2016 election to stop Trump, arguing it has not been appropriately probed in comparison to the Trump campaign's interactions with Russian officials.
Graham specifically cited the decisions made to surveil the Trump campaign in 2016 and its handling of the uncorroborated Steele Dossier.
"I'm going to get answers to this. If no one else cares, it seems that Republicans do. Because if the shoe were on the other foot, it would be front page news all over the world. The double standard here has been striking and quite frankly disappointing," Graham said.
He said he would issue subpoenas if he had to, but wanted to speak to ranking member Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) first. She did not have an immediate comment.
Graham's list of grievances ran long during a 30-minute new conference on Monday morning: He complained about anti-Trump bias in federal law enforcement agencies, lack of media interest in the FBI and DOJ's handling of the election, why Trump wasn't informed former campaign aide Carter Page was being watched and what role James Comey played in the saga.
And while Graham said his committee hopes to hear from former FBI Director Comey and other officials about the department's handling of the election, Graham is hoping Attorney General William Barr chooses "somebody like a Mr. Mueller to look at that." He said that would take the politics out of the equation, given that the Senate GOP investigation is unlikely to get the same sort of public support that a nonpartisan probe would receive from the public.
The investigation would look into "whether those who believed that the FBI and the Department of Justice were playing politics, that they wanted Clinton to win and Trump to lose, that somebody can satisfy them," Graham said. "By any reasonable standard, Mr. Mueller thoroughly investigated the Trump campaign. You cannot say that about the other side of the story."
Graham implored Barr to "understand for the country's sake: Appoint somebody outside the current system to look into these allegations, somebody we all trust and let them do what Mr. Mueller did."
Barr was scheduled to talk to Graham on Monday afternoon. Separately, Graham said he expects Barr to come for a public hearing to discuss his handling of the Mueller report. Graham said he will defer to Barr on whether Mueller should appear before the committee.
The new GOP probe came amid calls from Republicans everywhere to get some investigatory payback. Rudy Giuliani, Trump's personal lawyer, said on Jay Sekulow's podcast that he wanted to determine whether there were efforts to "entrap" members of the Trump campaign into a conspiracy with Russian operatives.
"Who did it? Where did this come from? Thin air? Somebody's got to go determine that now," Giuliani said. "Steele does a whole big silly stupid dossier that looks like it's written for National Enquirer."
The South Carolina Republican spent the weekend with Trump in Florida, even playing golf with Trump, albeit "terribly," he said. He made pains to assert that even though he supports Trump and wants him to win reelection, he always sought to protect the Mueller probe and never believed it was a "witch hunt," as Trump repeatedly called it.
He also said it was clear from the summary of Mueller's report that Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee, not a "300-pound guy sitting on a bed somewhere," a reference to Trump's musings about who might have received DNC emails. He sought to reach out to Democrats, too, insisting that Comey's statements on Hillary Clinton's email investigation in the 2016 should be a part of any probe looking at the last presidential election because "if the shoe were on the other foot, Republicans would have been pretty mad about that."
But after sticking up for the Mueller probe into Trump for so long, it was clear that Graham believes he has scores to settle. He made that much clear as he touted Barr's summary of the Mueller report as a "great day for the president," then immediately zeroed in on new targets at the Judiciary Committee.
"When it comes to the FISA warrant, the Clinton campaign, the counterintelligence investigation, it's pretty much been swept under the rug," Graham said. "Those days are over."
Kyle Cheney contributed to this report.
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