Leading Senate Republicans spearheading the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation are calling on the FBI to produce all text messages belonging to former deputy director Andrew McCabe, calling the delay in providing them to lawmakers “unacceptable.”
In a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) pressed the bureau to hand over the documents in accordance with a subpoena issued by Johnson’s committee back in August.
“As you know, on August 6, 2020, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee subpoenaed the FBI for all records related to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, which requires that records actually be produced to the Committee, not merely made available for review in a reading room,” they wrote. “We have waited nearly 70 days to receive these text messages, and when records were actually produced, we received only 8 percent of what we know exists.”
The Republicans added, “It is simply unacceptable that we have waited so long to receive so little.”
Johnson and Grassley asserted that the McCabe texts the FBI has produced thus far contain “notable information that is highly relevant to several aspects of the Committees’ oversight efforts.”
One aspect of the Russia probe under investigation by the committee involves records made public last week by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, who declassified documents that showed former CIA Director John Brennan briefed former President Obama on Hillary Clinton’s purported “plan” to link then-candidate Donald Trump to Russia as “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server” prior to the 2016 election.
The documents included Brennan’s handwritten notes, taken after he briefed President Obama on the intelligence received by the CIA, as well as a CIA memo revealing that officials referred the matter to former FBI Director James Comey and former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok for potential investigative action.
“We have made a public commitment to determine and reveal the full extent of official investigative and intelligence action taken by federal officials against the Trump campaign, its presidential transition, and into the administration,” the senators wrote in their letter to Wray, adding that information which has already been made public “reveals what might be the most outrageous abuse of power in U.S. history against a presidential candidate and sitting president.”
In their view, “The American people deserve full transparency, and they have waited entirely too long — almost four years in some instances — for answers. In light of that history, it is astounding that the FBI can claim to need more time to identify and produce responsive records.”
In August, Johnson’s committee subpoenaed the FBI, their first subpoena in the probe into the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation.
“This includes, but is not limited to, all records provided or made available to the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Justice for its review,” the subpoena declares, a reference to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s review of abuses related to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
In addition, the subpoena demanded “all records related to requests” to the General Services Administration or the Office of the Inspector General for the GSA for “presidential transition records from November 2016 through December 2017.”
“The FBI has already been producing documents and information to the Senate Homeland Security Committee, which are directly responsive to this subpoena,” the FBI said in a statement after receiving the subpoena. “As always, the FBI will continue to cooperate with the Committee’s requests, consistent with our law enforcement and national security obligations.”
According to Fox News, an official with the bureau said they have been producing documents to the committee on a “rolling basis and have surged resources to do so.”
In June, the committee voted to authorize subpoenas to the FBI and other agencies for records and testimony related to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation — the bureau’s internal code name for the Russia probe, which began in July 2016.
The subpoenas would cover all records made available to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz for his review of the Russia probe and alleged misconduct surrounding the FISA warrant approvals to surveil members of the Trump team.
The committee also authorized subpoenas to the State Department to produce records related to meetings or communication between the department and former British spy Christopher Steele,who compiled the infamous Trump dossier (notorious for claiming that Donald Trump hired Russian prostitutes to urinate on a hotel bed that had been used by Barack Obama).
As Fox News notes:
Johnson has the ability to issue subpoenas to a number of officials, including former FBI Counsel James Baker, Brennan, Comey, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former Obama chief of staff Denis McDonough, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, Strzok, Joe Pientka, former White House National Security Adviser Susan Rice, former FBI director of counterintelligence Bill Priestap, former U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power, Sidney Blumenthal, and a number of other Obama-era officials.
It appears that, at last, someone is watching the watchmen.
