The Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday will hold a hearing on the Department of Justice’s Inspector General’s report on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuse investigation.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz will testify before the committee.
Stay tuned to Breitbart News for live updates.
All times eastern.
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12:15 PM: Committee in recess until 1 PM.
12:05 PM: Leahy, based on a couple of pro-Trump messages, trying to establish the FBI also had pro-Trump biases. Leahy using his time to slam Giuliani and asks if Horowitz is concerned about Giuliani “running around in Europe”…
11:56 AM: Grassley asks if anyone has been prosecuted and Horowitz says nobody that he is aware of. Grassley wants to know if anybody in the FBI was concerned that their agents were providing FISA courts with inaccurate information. Grassley asks if the Trump campaign was treated differently than other campaigns, and Horowitz gives a roundabout answer, saying they were treated differently because of the “net result.” Grassley asks how can the FBI repair trust after the botched briefings during the 2016 election cycle. Horowitz says there “needs to be clear guidance and rules.”
11:36 AM: Feinstein says Horowitz’s report says the FBI had an “adequate predicate” to open its investigation. Horowitz points to information the FBI got from a “friendly foreign government.” Feinstein continuing to go after Barr and now using her time to ask if the whistleblower in the Ukraine investigation should be identified. Horowitz says the whistleblower should get “complete confidentiality” under the “very important provision” in the law. Feinstein says Trump has “relentlessly attacked” Strzok and Page and tries to rehabilitate them.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein: “It’s really extraordinary that the attorney general continues to make unsupported attacks on the agency that he is responsible for leading.” https://t.co/pphGDW1l2C pic.twitter.com/YKliMHX9uy
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) December 11, 2019
11:30 AM: Graham asks, if this is a counterintelligence investigation, who should they be trying to investigate? Horowitz answers the “election process,” including the “candidate” and the “American people.” Horowitz says the FBI never briefed the Trump campaign like they did the Clinton campaign. Graham asks if the investigation was legitimate if they never briefed the Trump campaign…
Graham says if what the FBI did “doesn’t bother you, you hate Trump way too much.”
Graham emphasizes the FBI knew Page was not a Russian agent but continued to surveil him and the Trump campaign.
11:15 AM: Graham asks if the report vindicates Comey, and Horowitz punts and says the report doesn’t vindicate anybody. Horowitz says Steele’s bias needed to be disclosed to the court. When Graham asks if this is the “best and the brightest,” Horowitz says he hopes others aren’t following their leads. Horowitz won’t talk about Clinesmith because he is not in the report and says he does not know what motivated him to alter the emails.
10:56 AM: Horowitz now giving his opening statement. Horowitz says they went through one million documents and commends his team for conducting “independent oversight.” He says after the FBI opened its investigation, it conducted “consensually monitored” meetings between sources and individuals associated with the Trump campaign. He says the they found that the operation received the “necessary approvals” under FBI policy. He says he didn’t find evidence that “political evidence” or “improper motivation” influenced the investigation. Horowitz now talking about the numerous violations by the FBI that made it seem the probable cause was stronger than it seemed when applying for FISA warrants. Horowitz says the courts should have been given more complete and accurate information, and “that did not occur.” He says Page’s surveillance continued even thought the FBI was gathering information that made its probable cause case weaker. He points to the failures of the supervisors in the chain of command and says “it’s incumbent on the entire chain of command” to “take the necessary steps” for proper oversight and talks about their “performance failures.”
10:48 AM: Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) praises the inspector general who “tells it as they see it.” Calls it a “saving grace.” Feinstein said Horowitz pledged to Congress last year to investigate whether political bias played a role in the FBI’s investigation and “kept his promise.” Feinstein says on the question of bias, Horowitz found “no evidence” of anti-Trump bias. Feinstein claims, citing the report, there is “no deep state” and the investigation wasn’t motivated by politics. She believes it is time to move on from the “false claims of political bias.” Feinstein now turning the tables and saying Republicans should be concerned about politically-motivated investigations by Trump and his attorney general.
The fact that CNN and MSNBC refused to run @LindseyGrahamSC’s opening statement uninterrupted, but is now carrying Senator Feinstein’s, is proof that political bias is not isolated to the FBI.
— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) December 11, 2019
Fake News MSNBC cuts away from Lindsey Graham’s opening but returns for Diane Feinstein.
— Dana French (@DanaBFrench) December 11, 2019
After Sen. Lindsey Graham’s 30+ minute opening statement, Sen. Dianne Feinstein says, “I assume there is no time limit?” pic.twitter.com/wCqWPLSo2E
— Evan McMurry (@evanmcmurry) December 11, 2019
10:26 AM: Graham rips Kevin Clinesmith and points out he was referred for prosecution for falsification of evidence. He marvels at how he was caught altering CIA emails about Carter Page. Graham says Clinesmith falsified the evidence because he did not want the investigation to stop. Graham points out Clinesmith texted “Viva La Resistance” after Trump got elected because of all of the “smelly people.” Graham says if you have met Carter Page the one thing you will not accuse him of is being James Bond. Graham says when they first applied for a FISA warrant, internal lawyers said they didn’t have enough evidence and McCabe suggested that they look at the Steele Dossier to get them “over the hump.” Graham says they then introduced the Dossier into the warrant application process and “it worked.” “Without this dossier, they go nowhere. With it, they are off to the races,” Graham says. Graham says the FBI didn’t tell the court that Steele was being paid by a company being paid by the Democrats to find dirt on Trump. Trump says Steele “was on a mission to get Donald Trump.” Graham notes Bruce Ohr mentioned that Steele was worried that his network could get disrupted if Trump got elected because Trump could appoint different people and take action against his “source network.” Graham mentions the “golden shower” in the Steele Dossier. Graham says if you read the document the first thing you think of is that “they got something on Donald Trump” but “it’s a bunch of a crap.” Graham says after the source of the report disavowed everything in the report, the FBI didn’t slow down and used the “garbage” for two more warrants. Graham says they were “on a mission” to protect all the “smelly people from Trump.” Graham says this could happen the next time because there are plenty of passionate people on his side that he would never want investigating the other side. Graham says if they can do this to a presidential candidate, imagine what they can do to you. He says “we can’t write this off as just being about one man or one event.” Graham says the system in the hands of a few bad people can do a lot of damage. He says he is hawkish but if corrections aren’t made, his support will be lost.
How is CNN not taking the Senate Judiciary Committee live right now? Pretty remarkable and telling.
— Garrett Ventry (@GarrettVentry) December 11, 2019
10:22 AM: Graham describes Peter Strzok and Lisa Page as two “central characters in this debacle.” Graham says people in newsrooms agree with what Strzok and Page’s texts about Trump. Graham reading Strzok’s and Page’s greatest hits, including the “insurance policy” and “Walmart” texts.
10:08 AM: Graham says he may take longer than 20 minutes for his opening remarks. Graham says if a Democrat were president, the headlines would be different and would blame the FBI for taking the law into its own hands. Graham says the people who were in charge of this investigation were handpicked by Andrew McCabe. Graham shreds McCabe as notes he is now at CNN. Graham wants to know are these people the best of the best, and hopes the answer to that is “no” or he will be “incredibly depressed.” Graham emphasizes he FBI never made an effort to brief Trump. He wonders why and hopes he can get an answer. He says a “counterintelligence investigation is a good thing until it becomes a bad thing.”
.@LindseyGrahamSC opening statement at the Senate Judiciary Cmte hearing on the FISA report “Crossfire Hurricane was probably the best name ever given to an investigation in the history of investigations ’cause I think that’s what we wound up with – a crossfire and a hurricane.” pic.twitter.com/cYbaevUFpB
— CSPAN (@cspan) December 11, 2019
Graham says the “few irregularities” become a massive criminal conspiracy to defraud the FISA court and keep an operation open against a sitting U.S. president violating nearly every law. Graham says Trump’s time will come and go but what happened here can never happen again because the “system failed” and people at the highest level of the government took the law into their own hands. Graham says Horowitz’s team actually discovered abuses of power that he didn’t know could exist in 2019. He says it’s as if J. Edgar Hoover came back to life along with an FBI that had a chip on its shoulder and wanted to find out what was going on in everybody’s lives.
Graham says the FBI’s Russia probe was “as if J. Edgar Hoover came back to life”
“The old FBI — the FBI that had a chip on its shoulder and wanted to intimidate people” https://t.co/QYeNW3Mzpx pic.twitter.com/kfIYDsBP0d
— CBS News (@CBSNews) December 11, 2019
IG Horowitz will repeat message to Senate Judiciary, say inquiry “did not find any documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the FBI’s decision to conduct these operations.”
Also, “no evidence” FBI tried to place agents in campaign— Michael Mathes (@MichaelMathes) December 11, 2019
10:01 AM: Hearing is about to get started as Judiciary Committee Chairman Graham (R-SC) arrives.
House GOP always wants a hearing:
REMINDER: We’d also like to hold a hearing to examine IG Horowitz’s #FISA report.
We’re just waiting for @RepMaloney to schedule it.
What’s stopping her? https://t.co/fHPmlwaSD2 pic.twitter.com/3p7toXbS7e
— Oversight Committee Republicans (@GOPoversight) December 11, 2019
9:45 AM: Horowitz arrives and is making his way to the Hart Senate Office Building for the hearing.
