[Senate Hearing 116-403]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                                         S. Hrg. 116-403

                 CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT IN THE FACE OF
                  EXECUTIVE BRANCH AND MEDIA SUPPRESSION: 
                  THE CASE STUDY OF CROSSFIRE HURRICANE

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                              COMMITTEE ON
               HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                     ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS


                             SECOND SESSION

                               ----------                              

                            DECEMBER 3, 2020

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          Available via the World Wide Web: http://govinfo.gov

                       Printed for the use of the
        Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
        
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                                __________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
43-069 PDF                 WASHINGTON : 2021                     
          
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------   

        COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS

                    RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin, Chairman
ROB PORTMAN, Ohio                    GARY C. PETERS, Michigan
RAND PAUL, Kentucky                  THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware
JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma             MAGGIE HASSAN, New Hampshire
MITT ROMNEY, Utah                    KAMALA D. HARRIS, California
RICK SCOTT, Florida                  KYRSTEN SINEMA, Arizona
MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming             JACKY ROSEN, Nevada
JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri

                Gabrielle D'Adamo Singer, Staff Director
                   Joseph C. Folio III, Chief Counsel
                  Brian M. Downey, Senior Investigator
          Scott D. Wittmann, Senior Professional Staff Member
               David M. Weinberg, Minority Staff Director
               Zachary I. Schram, Minority Chief Counsel
           Alan S. Kahn, Minority Chief Investigative Counsel
                     Laura W. Kilbride, Chief Clerk
                     Thomas J. Spino, Hearing Clerk

                            C O N T E N T S

                                 ------                                
Opening statements:
                                                                   Page
    Senator Johnson..............................................     1
    Senator Peters...............................................     5
    Senator Lankford.............................................    14
    Senator Scott................................................    17
    Senator Hawley...............................................    20
Prepared statements:
    Senator Johnson..............................................    33
    Senator Peters...............................................    40

                               WITNESSES
                       Thursday, December 3, 2020

Sharyl Attkisson, Investigative Journalist.......................     7
Kevin R. Brock, Former Assistant Director for Intelligence, 
  Federal Bureau of Investigation................................     8
Lee Smith, Investigative Journalist and Author...................    10

                     Alphabetical List of Witnesses

Attkisson, Sharyl:
    Testimony....................................................     7
    Prepared statement...........................................    42
Brock, Kevin R.:
    Testimony....................................................     8
    Prepared statement...........................................    46
Smith, Lee:
    Testimony....................................................    10
    Prepared statement...........................................    50

                                APPENDIX

Johnson Timeline.................................................    52
Crossfire Hurricane Timeline.....................................    75
DOJ Productions..................................................   106
FBI Productions..................................................   219
State Productions................................................   410
DOJ IG Report Executive Summary..................................   536
SSCI Report Findings.............................................   559

 
                  CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT IN THE FACE
                     OF EXECUTIVE BRANCH AND MEDIA
           SUPPRESSION: THE CASE STUDY OF CROSSFIRE HURRICANE

                              ----------                              


                       THURSDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2020

                                     U.S. Senate,  
                           Committee on Homeland Security  
                                  and Governmental Affairs,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:08 a.m., in 
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, and via Webex, 
Hon. Ron Johnson, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
    Present: Senators Johnson, Lankford, Scott, Hawley, Peters, 
Hassan, and Rosen.

             OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN JOHNSON

    Chairman Johnson. Good morning. This hearing is called to 
order.
    The title of this hearing is ``Congressional Oversight in 
the Face of Executive Branch and Media Suppression,'' and in 
particular, ``The Case of Crossfire Hurricane''--a corrupt 
investigation. I will add that. The hearing is actually quite a 
bit broader than that, but we will certainly focus on that.
    I became Chairman of this Committee in January 2015 and 
will complete my 6-year term at the end of this month. We can 
all be proud of the more than 100 pieces of legislation we 
worked on together as a Committee that became law. The other 
more than 200 bills that we passed out of Committee, although 
not signed into law, can still serve as a basis for future 
legislation.
    Our Committee and Subcommittees also have broad oversight 
jurisdiction and responsibilities that we have not ignored. We 
investigated and exposed problems within the Veterans Affairs 
(VA) health care system, human trafficking, national security 
leaks, and systemic violations of the Hatch Act within the U.S. 
Postal Service (USPS), to name just a few. Most recently, we 
have held eight hearings and roundtables on the current 
administration's response to the coronavirus disease (COVID-
19).
    It is not surprising that some of our oversight 
investigations did not receive bipartisan support, in 
particular, those concerning corruption within the Obama 
Administration.
    In February 2018, reflecting on his 8 years in office, 
President Obama stated, ``We did not have a scandal that 
embarrassed us,'' and further, in May 2018, he stated, ``I did 
not have scandals.''
    Not only were those scandals denied by the former 
President, they were also largely ignored by both our Democrat 
colleagues and most of the media. But nothing could be further 
from the truth. A short list of the known scandals demonstrates 
why they should not be ignored and need to be fully 
investigated and exposed.
    Now, I will depart from my full written statement because I 
have more detail on these as I list them out, and I will ask 
that my full statement be entered in the record,\1\ but let us 
just go down a quick list, and I want to make a couple points 
why these are relevant.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Senator Johnson appears in the 
Appendix on page 33.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Fast and Furious. The result of that--and we have Ms. 
Attkisson here that can testify to being spied on. As a result 
of that scandal, the Obama Administration started spying on 
journalists. We also saw that Eric Holder was held in contempt 
of Congress but never held accountable for it, which I am 
highlighting right now, which just shows one of the problems 
Congress has in its oversight capabilities. We have no method 
of enforcing subpoenas or prosecuting somebody held in contempt 
if that person held in contempt is a member of the 
administration. It really renders us very toothless in terms of 
effective oversight.
    Benghazi. I will not go into the detail there other than to 
say that Susan Rice went on Sunday morning shows, lied to the 
American people, and said that there was a violent protest 
outside of our embassy sparked by a hateful video. Secretary 
Clinton then was reported to comment to the father of one of 
the fallen heroes, ``We will make sure that the person who made 
that film is arrested and prosecuted.'' It just so happens that 
the producer of the video was jailed shortly thereafter and 
served a year in jail, in prison for a probation violation of a 
separate charge. I would view that as somewhat abuse of power.
    The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) scandal, where the IRS 
was turned into a political weapon against conservatives, 
targeted, and not allowed to have tax-exempt status. In that 
case, IRS employee Lois Lerner just refused to testify. She 
pleaded the Fifth before Congress. Oh, by the way, she retired 
with full retirement benefits, was never held accountable, 
never punished. IRS later admitted that years after potentially 
responsive records, including many of Lerner's emails, had been 
lost due to hard-drive crashes. Once again, no one was ever 
held accountable.
    The Biden-Ukraine conflict-of-interest scandal. The thing I 
want to point out about this is how the press actually was 
interested in this back in October 2015 when the Wall Street 
Journal actually inquired of the Vice President's office about 
that conflict of interest with Hunter being on Burisma's Board. 
They inquired on October 21. That was the exact same day that 
Vice President Biden decided not to run in the primary against 
Hillary Clinton. In December 2019, Politico actually published 
a 20-page article on Biden Inc., revealed an awful lot of some 
of the types of financial foreign entanglements that Senator 
Grassley and my investigations also revealed in our September 
2020 report. Past that point, the press pretty well ignored the 
glaring conflict of interest that George Kent said was 
``awkward'' for all policymakers trying to run an 
anticorruption agenda in Ukraine.
    The Clinton email scandal. When I took over Chairman in 
January 2015, it was in March 2015 that it was revealed that 
Hillary Clinton ran most of her emails through a private 
server. Not only is this Committee the general oversight 
Committee of Congress, we have specific legislative 
jurisdiction on Federal records. So that really began my work 
and this Committee's work for the last 6 years investigating 
some of this corruption in the Obama Administration.
    I think it is important to note that this represents from 
my standpoint the unequal application of justice. Hillary 
Clinton was exonerated. The email scandal, the midyear 
examination investigation morphed into the Crossfire Hurricane 
scandal. I just want to talk about one of the texts that Peter 
Strzok texted to Lisa Page shortly after they exonerated 
Hillary Clinton. He said, ``And damn this feels momentous.'' 
Now he is talking about Crossfire Hurricane. ``Because this 
matters. The other one did, too''--the midyear exam--``but that 
was to ensure we did not F something up. This matters because 
this MATTERS. Super glad to be on this voyage with you.''
    Yet we had the Inspector General (IG), when he reviewed the 
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuse, in his 
report claimed that there was no proof that political bias 
affected any actions. I would challenge that statement.
    The final one I want to talk about is what we uncovered in 
our July 2017 report on leaks, and the overall summary of that 
is that report showed 125 leaks in the first 126 days of the 
Trump administration; 62 of them would have been defined as 
``harming national security,'' according to the Obama 
Administration's definition of that. And that 62 compares with, 
I think, eight or nine during both the Bush and the Obama 
Administrations. Just an explosion of leaks. By the way, those 
leaks are what drove and sustained the false narrative of 
Russian collusion with the Trump campaign that was proven 
totally false but was the center of the Crossfire Hurricane 
investigation and then a Special Counsel, and, quite honestly, 
morphed into an impeachment trial here in the Senate.
    Now, a common element of each of these scandals is the 
abuse of executive branch power. If this misconduct remains 
hidden or goes unpunished, it represents a serious threat to 
our individual freedoms and our democratic republic. I do not 
make that statement lightly.
    I would also say they really demonstrate a pattern of bias 
and unequal treatment, certainly bias in the media, bias in the 
social media, the censorship that we have witnessed over the 
last few months, but also a pattern of bias and unequal 
treatment in our justice system. I pointed that out earlier. I 
would also say a pattern of unequal treatment, unequal loyalty 
and bias within the executive branch. I mean, I find it 
shocking that within 2 weeks of President Trump entering 
office, two of his phone calls to world leaders were leaked to 
the press. This is unprecedented. It is actually what spawned 
our investigation into the leaks, to show the 125 leaks in the 
first 126 days. This cannot go on. This is dangerous to our 
democratic republic.
    Unfortunately, my efforts to uncover the truth have been 
severely obstructed by the agencies involved and by entrenched 
bureaucrats that have every incentive to keep it hidden. This 
has been true during both the Obama and Trump administrations.
    For example, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) did 
not meaningfully produce records about the Crossfire Hurricane 
investigation until I subpoenaed them in August of this year, 
and even then, documents are heavily redacted. I have just a 
quick example of this.
    One of our reports is on the transition and the abuse of 
the General Services Administration (GSA) process. This is an 
email that GSA produced to us, and you can see it is--we can 
read the whole thing except for the mobile phone number of the 
sender of the email. This is the exact same email produced to 
us by the FBI. As you can see, almost everything is redacted. 
There is no reason for things to be redacted. There is nothing 
involving or harming national security here. It might embarrass 
the agency, but it does not harm national security. This is 
what we have been dealing with. This is the resistance we have 
encountered in our investigations into abuse of power.
    In May, Senator Grassley and I requested a list of Obama 
officials who unmasked Trump campaign and transition officials. 
That list has apparently been compiled, but it has not been 
provided to the Committee because it remains stuck somewhere 
between the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Department 
of Justice (DOJ). Without those records, it would not be 
productive, so we have not interviewed the officials involved 
in those unmaskings.
    Finally, just yesterday the State Department produced an 
unclassified version of an email that Senator Grassley and I 
requested in August that still contained several redactions.
    I was able to review the unredacted version and can only 
say that what remains classified should not be classified. The 
information would not harm national security, but it would 
reflect poorly on Vice President Biden. That is not a valid 
reason for classification or for indefinitely withholding the 
information from Congress.
    These investigations have also been hampered by false 
allegations made against me and Senator Grassley by senior 
Democrat leaders, including this Committee's Ranking Member. In 
letters, purportedly classified staff memos immediately leaked 
to the press, and statements on the floor and to the media, 
they have accused Senator Grassley and me of receiving and 
disseminating Russian disinformation.
    This is patently false and is easily proven so by a careful 
examination of our reports. Yet no matter how many times we 
issue denials, a compliant media repeats their false 
allegations. This was the exact same playbook used with the 
Steele dossier and the Russian collusion hoax. These claims are 
especially galling because in both cases, Democrats were the 
real peddlers of Russian disinformation.
    Now, the purpose of today's hearing is to release and 
examine two timelines--I have them right here--one that is a 
little more condensed and more general about all of our 
investigations,\1\ and then one that is really specific and far 
more detailed on the Crossfire Hurricane investigation\1\. To 
help place these scandals in perspective, we are also going to 
release new documents we have obtained related to the Crossfire 
Hurricane investigation and also to demonstrate how much has 
been withheld and how many questions remain unanswered. I ask 
that all this information be entered into the record.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The information referenced by Senator Johnson appears in the 
Appendix on page 52.
    \1\ The information referenced by Senator Johnson appears in the 
Appendix on page 75.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The volume of information that should be considered cannot 
be covered in a single hearing. Instead, I have invited three 
witnesses to talk about specific aspects of these scandals in 
which they have detailed knowledge. Again, I thank the 
witnesses for the time they have taken to prepare and appear 
before this Committee, and I look forward to their testimony.
    Again, I really do want to thank the witnesses for your 
time and your appearance here, and with that, I will turn it 
over to Senator Peters.

             OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PETERS\2\

    Senator Peters. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \2\ The prepared statement of Senator Peters appear in the Appendix 
on page 40.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Mr. Chairman, I just want to start by saying that I 
certainly appreciate the bipartisan work that we have 
accomplished together during this Congress.
    Under our leadership, this Committee has advanced important 
legislation to strengthen border security, to safeguard 
critical facilities and institutions from terrorist attacks, 
streamline government efficiency and in the process save 
taxpayer dollars, and ensure strong oversight of the 
coronavirus emergency spending.
    This Committee does its best work for the American people 
when we come together in areas that we can mutually agree on.
    I regret that today's hearing unfortunately does not meet 
our best traditions of nonpartisanship and bipartisanship.
    This Committee has already held a hearing on Oversight of 
the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. We heard testimony from 
Department of Justice Inspector General Horowitz about the 
errors and the misconduct that his nonpartisan, independent 
investigation found.
    Inspector General Horowitz interviewed more than 100 
witnesses and reviewed more than 1 million documents over the 
course of nearly 2 years to come to his conclusions. In fact, I 
ask that the executive summary of this report be entered into 
the record,\3\ Mr. Chairman, without objection.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \3\ The information referenced by Senator Peters appear in the 
Appendix on page 536.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Chairman Johnson. Without objection.
    Senator Peters. I will remind the Chairman that Mr. 
Horowitz found that ``opening the investigation was in 
compliance with Department and FBI policies'' and found ``no 
evidence of political bias in its opening or in any 
investigative step taken by the Crossfire Hurricane team.''
    We know the Inspector General did find problems with this 
investigation, and the FBI has already implemented those 
recommended changes to prevent those errors from happening 
again.
    In addition to our own Committee's hearing, the Senate 
Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over the FBI and 
the Department of Justice, is currently undertaking its own 
investigation. Prosecutor John Durham is also continuing his 
own investigation at the Department of Justice.
    The Senate Intelligence Committee has also already 
investigated, and its bipartisan report concluded that Trump 
campaign manager Paul Manafort's willingness to share 
information with the Russian intelligence services was a grave 
counterintelligence threat. I ask that the findings of the 
Senate Intelligence Committee also be entered into the 
record,\1\ without objection, Mr. Chairman.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The information from the Senate Intelligence Committee appears 
in the Appendix on page 559.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Chairman Johnson. Without objection.
    Senator Peters. Today's hearing seeks to rehash the same 
matter--in a more partisan way--to reach conclusions that the 
Chairman has already announced publicly. The panelists here 
today are not witnesses to the underlying events. Their public 
commentary has been extremely partisan and in some cases--such 
as disputing the result of the most recent election--entirely 
divorced from reality.
    The strength of American democracy and a peaceful 
transition of power depends largely on the American people's 
trust that our elections are free and that they are fair.
    There was no plot against President Trump when he won the 
election 4 years ago or when he lost the election last month. 
Promoting a demonstrably false narrative with dangerous 
rhetoric erodes trust and prevents our country from healing.
    Our Committee has a real responsibility to conduct 
oversight of the Federal Government's role in pandemic response 
and so many other matters impacting national security. Given 
the dangerous world that we live in, we simply do not have time 
to indulge in hyper-partisan investigations that simply do not 
advance the interests of the American people. Therefore, I do 
not think today's hearing is an appropriate use of our 
Committee's time, resources, or, quite frankly, credibility.
    Next year, I look forward to returning to our strengths: to 
work together in a bipartisan way to address the devastating 
public health, economic, and security challenges that we are 
facing as a country.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Senator Peters.
    It is the tradition of this Committee to swear in 
witnesses, so, Ms. Attkisson, if you would just raise your 
right hand, and if the gentlemen here will stand and raise your 
right hand. Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you will 
give before this Committee will be the truth, the whole truth, 
and nothing but the truth, so help you, God?
    Ms. Attkisson. I do.
    Mr. Brock. I do.
    Mr. Smith. I do.
    Chairman Johnson. Please be seated.
    Our first witness is Sharyl Attkisson. Ms. Attkisson is an 
investigative journalist and the host of the national 
television news program ``Full Measure.'' For 30 years, Ms. 
Attkisson was a correspondent and anchor at Columbia 
Broadcasting System (CBS) News, Public Broadcasting Service 
(PBS), Cable Network News (CNN), and in local news. Ms. 
Attkisson has authored several books on U.S. politics, the 
media, and government abuses. Ms. Attkisson has received five 
Emmy Awards and the Edward R. Murrow Award for investigative 
reporting. Ms. Attkisson.

   TESTIMONY OF SHARYL ATTKISSON,\1\ INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST

    Ms. Attkisson. Thank you. Good morning, everybody. I have 
been a nonpartisan journalist for nearly 40 years in local 
news, CNN, CBS, PBS, and the national station group Sinclair. I 
have witnessed a dramatic devolution in my industry as we have 
allowed ourselves to be transformed into tools of political and 
corporate interests pushing narratives, slanting information on 
the news and online, and seeking to shape public opinion rather 
than report facts and various views.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Attkisson appears in the Appendix 
on page 42.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    This means today's media landscape has allowed some of the 
biggest and most important stories of our time to be covered in 
a fantastical and one-sided, often inaccurate and incomplete 
way, or perhaps escape coverage entirely, while important 
violations of law and constitutional rights by powerful 
interests go unchallenged.
    We have to confront the fact that our intelligence 
structure and some inside our Federal agencies have proven more 
powerful than Congress, the legislative or judicial branches, 
more influential with the media, and largely immune from 
oversight and after the most egregious violations from 
prosecution.
    Even the President of the United States, whoever it may be, 
plays second fiddle to the structure, and partly because the 
news media has dropped the ball, these players are 
unaccountable, operating in an extraconstitutional fashion that 
persists from administration to administration meaning this is 
not a partisan issue.
    Just one example can be found in the government's spying on 
journalists and other innocent Americans. After an incredible 
series of revelations beginning in 2013, nobody was held 
accountable. Government agents initiated secret surveillance 
and subpoenas against then-Fox News reporter James Rosen and 
Associated Press (AP) reporters. CBS, where I worked at the 
time, publicly announced in 2013 that forensics proved my 
computers were remotely hacked and my work remotely monitored, 
and the CBS news systems were accessed in the supervisory 
effort as well.
    After the forensics definitively proved the government was 
responsible, has secretly installed a keystroke monitoring 
program, exfiltrated files, listened in on me secretly 
activating audio, looked through my work photos, then remotely 
overwrote computer logs to try to erase their tracks when we 
discovered them, nothing happened, zero. To this day, I am 
still suing in civil court trying to force the Justice 
Department to reveal the names of all the specific agents 
involved and, so I thought at one point, force accountability 
and stop it from happening to others. But 7 long years later, 
it is an uphill battle as the Justice Department defends the 
guilty agents using taxpayer dollars. It should be no surprise 
that intel abuses continued.
    When top intel officials at the time, James Clapper and 
John Brennan, provided false information to Congress about 
surveillance of American citizens and the Central Intelligence 
Agency (CIA) spying on Senate computers, all is forgiven. When 
the Inspector General refers former FBI Director James Comey 
for criminal charges, the Justice Department says, ``No need. 
He meant no harm.'' When FBI Director Christopher Wray falsely 
testifies to Congress that there have been no 702 surveillance 
abuses, contrary to numerous findings by the FISA Court and 
others, nobody says a word. When government officials unmask 
the names of innocent American citizens, when Congress makes 
dozens of referrals for criminal charges regarding alleged 
intel misbehavior, when committees request relevant documents 
from Federal agencies they are supposed to oversee, when FBI 
cell phones containing possible evidence of corruption are 
repeatedly accidentally wiped, when information is illegally 
leaked for political purposes, nothing.
    The people responsible for these things, we are to believe, 
were confused, did not understand the question, did not 
understand the rules, did not mean any harm, it was an 
accident. But those not on their team are never afforded the 
same generous benefit of the doubt. This has caused a crisis of 
confidence in our public institutions. Among many, there is a 
lack of trust in Congress, the media, health officials, the 
Justice Department, and our elections process. Now, even when 
Congress may be doing the public good, the media may be telling 
the truth, health officials may be giving good advice, the 
Department of Justice may be doing the right thing, or the 
elections are not fraudulent, many do not buy the story we are 
telling.
    We have created this environment over a period of decades, 
and then we look at the public, which watches the double 
standards, whipsaw between the alternate realities presented by 
the media, and we ask why they are mistrustful as if it is 
their doing, when it is ours. If we are unable to change 
things, we can only expect more of the same or worse.
    Thank you.
    Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Ms. Attkisson.
    Our next witness is Kevin Brock. Mr. Brock worked for 
nearly 24 years as an FBI agent. After the 9/11 attacks, he 
served as the FBI's first Assistant Director for Intelligence 
and later become the first Principal Deputy Director at the 
National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). Mr. Brock now works in 
the private sector. Mr. Brock.

  TESTIMONY OF KEVIN R. BROCK, FORMER ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR 
         INTELLIGENCE, FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

    Mr. Brock. Good morning, Senator Johnson, Senator Peters, 
and Members of the Committee. I thank you for the invitation to 
appear before the Committee today. I have submitted a detailed 
prepared statement,\1\ which I will summarize now, and then be 
happy to answer any follow-up questions.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Brock appears in the Appendix on 
page 46.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    During my nearly-24-year career in the FBI, I investigated 
and managed numerous significant counterintelligence cases and 
specifically Russian counterintelligence investigations. As a 
senior FBI executive, I led initiatives that caused me to work 
closely with the Department of Justice to align new FBI policy 
changes with the Attorney General Guidelines (AGG). As a 
result, I had a deep knowledge and understanding of the 
Attorney General Guidelines throughout my career, and while 
certain changes may have occurred to the guidelines since my 
retirement, I retain a solid understanding of the Attorney 
General Guidelines' core protections of Americans from 
inappropriate overreach by the FBI.
    As a former FBI executive and now private citizen, I have 
authored several op-ed articles critical of fired FBI 
executives James Comey, Andrew McCabe, and Peter Strzok, and 
their initiation and handling of the Crossfire Hurricane 
investigation and the harm their actions did to U.S. citizens 
aligned with the Trump campaign. In addition, I have been 
similarly critical of the stunningly inappropriate actions of 
former Director Comey that objectively impacted the Hillary 
Clinton campaign leading up to the Presidential election in 
2016.
    In short, I have been speaking up, at some personal risk, 
not for political reasons but, rather, out of my concern that 
the integrity of the FBI and the trust that the American people 
have traditionally placed in the FBI have been imperiled by the 
faulty and reckless actions of those former FBI leaders. I do 
not speak on behalf of the FBI nor any current or former FBI 
employee, only myself. I have, however, received abundant and 
overwhelmingly positive feedback from current and former FBI 
personnel concerned for the future of the FBI.
    Let me be as clear as possible: These disgraced former FBI 
executives never should have opened the Crossfire Hurricane 
investigation. They did not, despite the DOJ Inspector 
General's subsequent comments to the contrary, have adequate 
predication for starting an intrusive investigation into U.S. 
citizens.
    The FBI document that opened the Crossfire Hurricane 
investigation violated the Attorney General Guidelines. It 
contained no predication that an experienced and knowledgeable 
FBI counterintelligence agent would deem adequate to start an 
investigation. In fact, the document contained exculpatory 
statements that should have chilled any lingering impetus to 
proceed further.
    The Inspector General's assertion is based solely on his 
interviews of the Crossfire Hurricane team who, not 
surprisingly, claim they had sufficient reasons for 
investigating the Trump campaign. I respectfully disagree and 
will be happy to answer any questions why I believe the IG is 
mistaken.
    The IG's report documents startling comments by FBI 
executives that reveal investigative decisions against U.S. 
citizens based on speculation unsupported by any material fact 
pattern. These executives articulated a concern that a 
Presidential campaign may have received and accepted 
disinformation from Russian sources, thereby endangering 
national security and election integrity.
    Ironically, these same executives, less than 2 months after 
opening the Crossfire Hurricane case, received a dossier 
determined to be Russian disinformation that the Clinton 
campaign not only accepted but paid for. In an indefensible 
double standard, the Crossfire Hurricane team chose not to 
initiate a similar investigation into the Clinton campaign. 
They instead used the ``salacious and unverified dossier''--
those are Mr. Comey's quotes--as justification for a fraudulent 
FISA surveillance of a U.S. citizen. In effect, the Crossfire 
Hurricane team's cynical use of a clear Russian disinformation 
operation became its own threat to national security and civil 
liberties.
    The Crossfire Hurricane investigation was not an abuse by 
the FBI. It was an abuse of the FBI, by a rogue band of 
reckless executives--I am sorry. It was not an abuse by the 
FBI. It was an abuse of the FBI by a rogue band of reckless 
executives. Because of the duplicity of these disgraced former 
FBI leaders, many Americans have lost trust and faith in the 
FBI. Perhaps that is the greatest wreckage of this entire 
debacle. Our democracy depends heavily on objective, 
dispassionate, and unbiased enforcement of our laws by the FBI. 
That trust has been eroded.
    These shameless former FBI executives continue to collect 
significant sums of money from book royalties, media 
appearances, movie rights, teaching gigs, and Go Fund Me scams. 
Americans would like to see accountability, but hope wanes. The 
efforts of this Committee to shed light is welcome and 
commendable. Perhaps it will at least help prevent something 
like Crossfire Hurricane from ever happening again to any 
American or future Presidential nominee.
    Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Brock.
    Our final witness is Lee Smith. Mr. Smith has worked in the 
press for more than 30 years, writing on foreign policy, 
national security, and media. He has written for the New York 
Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New 
Yorker, among other publications. Mr. Smith has also authored 
several books on U.S. politics in the Middle East. Mr. Smith.

 TESTIMONY OF LEE SMITH,\1\ INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR

    Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Chairman Johnson and 
Ranking Member Peters, thank you for the invitation to speak 
before the Committee. Thanks also to Committee members and 
staff.
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    \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Smith appears in the Appendix on 
page 50.
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    Nearly 4 years ago, a series of crimes were committed in 
full view of the public, and to date no one has been charged. 
It was the one set of crimes inarguably committed during the 
course of Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI's investigation of 
Russian interference in the 2016 election and the possible 
involvement of the Trump campaign. The crimes began with the 
leak from a classified intercept of a telephone conversation 
between then-President-elect Donald Trump's incoming National 
Security Adviser Michael Flynn and the Russian ambassador to 
the United States.
    In January and February 2017, the Washington Post published 
stories sourced to intercepts of Flynn's phone calls and 
speculated that the retired three-star general might have 
broken the law by discussing the foreign policy of the United 
States with foreign officials. For General Flynn, it was the 
beginning of a twisted journey forced upon him by political 
opponents and professional rivals and ending only last week 
with a presidential pardon.
    For America, those leaks are the centerpiece of one of the 
most remarkable crime sprees in our history--classified 
information leaked serially to prestige press organizations for 
the purpose of prosecuting a campaign of political warfare 
against a sitting President. Reporters rarely, if ever, 
actually saw the classified documents. They relied on badly 
spun accounts of the documents fed to them by a circle of 
intelligence leakers. The classified information was used to 
advance the narrative that Trump had been compromised by 
Russian spies. U.S. officials knew not only that they were 
breaking the law; they also knew they were marketing a lie, and 
they knew where it originated.
    According to notes taken by former CIA director John 
Brennan, he briefed then-President Barack Obama in late July 
2016 that the Hillary Clinton campaign had approved a plan to 
``vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming 
interference by Russian security services.'' Knowing the 
purpose and provenance of the story, Brennan nonetheless pushed 
it to senior U.S. officials as fact. He briefed then-Senate 
Minority Leader Harry Reid on information drawn from the 
notorious dossier paid for by the Clinton campaign. Brennan 
also took it to the FBI. He said that he shared that 
information regarding Trump aides and Russian officials ``with 
the Bureau so that they could take it.'' In sworn testimony 
before Congress in May 2017, the former CIA Director said the 
information he gave to Federal law enforcement ``serves as the 
basis for the FBI investigation.''
    It was to lend more color and weight to the Russia smear 
targeting Trump that government officials leaked classified 
information like the Flynn intercept. None have ever been 
charged. The press itself was honored. The Washington Post and 
New York Times were awarded a joint Pulitzer Prize for their 
numerous stories sourced to classified information leaked to 
advance a fraudulent narrative.
    Because of its part in pushing Russiagate, American 
intelligence services and law enforcement authorities are 
regarded with skepticism, if not contempt, by half of the U.S. 
public. Programs--like foreign intelligence surveillance act 
warrants, confidential human sources, and classified 
intelligence--designed to keep citizens safe from terrorism, 
organized crime, and adversarial States were turned against 
Americans who were simply practicing their right to participate 
in our political process.
    The Crossfire Hurricane investigation marks a new, even 
transitional, moment in our history. I lived in and reported 
from the Middle East for more than a decade, and the shape of 
the FBI and media's joint operation is unmistakable. It signals 
the marriage of the ministry of the interior (responsible for 
domestic spying) to the ministry of information (responsible 
for manufacturing propaganda) in a combined effort to destroy 
anyone it perceives as an opponent. With Crossfire Hurricane, 
major American institutions, the press and our intelligence 
community (IC), have adopted the practices and ethos of the 
Third World. It is not clear at present how we might return 
from that territory.
    The issue then is not simply that the press and our 
intelligence services have forfeited the faith of large parts 
of the U.S. public, but that they have injected into our public 
sphere a conspiracy theory. What they have done is the 
equivalent of dumping mercury into every American river, lake, 
and reservoir.
    Thank you.
    Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Smith.
    I will start off the questioning to Mr. Brock. This is 
information we should have had years ago. But it was recently 
revealed when John Ratcliffe released a document that said the 
U.S. intelligence community reported back on July 26, 2016 that 
allegedly approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, a proposal 
from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump 
by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian 
security services.
    Mr. Brock, in your testimony you talked about the unequal 
application with the unequal treatment by the FBI of the 
Clinton campaign versus the Trump campaign. To me this is just 
Exhibit A in that unequal treatment. Here you have the 
intelligence community actually knowing that it is Hillary 
Clinton approving of a plan to stir up the scandal, tying 
Candidate Trump to Russian collusion. That kind of explains the 
whole Steele dossier, doesn't it? The FBI knew that that was 
bought and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign. The FBI 
knew that the primary subsource of that Steele dossier had been 
investigated by them in 2009. They knew all of this for sure by 
the end of January 2017, but some of this information was known 
in July, in October.
    So speak a little bit in terms of the unequal treatment of 
the two campaigns, and also I want you to speak to--I agree 
with you that this was not an adequate predicate for an 
investigation, OK? But speak to the FBI guidelines about 
continuing an investigation when you have all this exculpatory 
information.
    Mr. Brock. One of the most puzzling aspects of this whole--
really it is kind of a national tragedy. It is a tragedy for 
the FBI certainly, as we look back and see the thin basis for 
launching an investigation like this. When you juxtapose the 
reasons that the FBI stated in their opening communication for 
starting up a case and then their comments to the Inspector 
General later as to why they felt they were compelled to 
investigate the Trump campaign, they do not add up with a 
certain logic that should have been applied to the dossier and 
its connection to the Clinton campaign.
    If they applied the same logic to the dossier and the fact 
that the Clinton campaign arranged for and paid for that and 
received Russian disinformation, then they would have had to 
open up a separate counterintelligence investigation, and yet 
they did not.
    Chairman Johnson. Quite honestly, closed down the Trump 
investigation.
    Because it was predicated on all that false information.
    Mr. Brock. It was predicated not only on thin information, 
a fourth-hand hearsay; also, the statements that they relied on 
contained two exculpatory statements that, A, there was no 
indication that the Trump campaign received or accepted the 
Russian suggestion that they had information damaging to 
Hillary Clinton; and, B, the Russians were prepared to release 
it no matter what the Trump campaign did or not. That is in 
their own opening EC. That right there for an experienced 
counterintelligence leader in the FBI should have been enough 
to say, ``We do not have enough to open up a case.''
    Chairman Johnson. I want to address my next question to the 
two journalists. There really has been and there is an unholy 
alliance between liberals, Democrats, and the media, and there 
is completely unequal treatment by the media, by most of the 
media, Democrat versus Republican. Again, Exhibit A in this 
bias is how they treated the whole Russian hoax, and as our 
report showed, 125 leaks in the first 126 days that just drove 
this, sustained it, fueled this false narrative.
    I will start with Ms. Attkisson. What duty do reporters 
have to reveal their sources when the sources give them false 
information?
    Ms. Attkisson. It is a case-by-case thing. There is no 
standard across our profession. In fact, one of the things I 
have criticized is that at the beginning of the Trump 
administration, many news organizations announced that they 
were suspending their normal ethics and standards that dictate 
how their news organization typically deals with things such as 
use of anonymous sources, that they were suspending these 
because they said they needed to suspend their standards to 
cover a uniquely dangerous President. I have argued and I think 
you have observed that I actually think there is no more 
important time for us to keep our standards and ethics than 
when we are covering somebody that maybe we do not like or we 
have strong feelings about. That is what standards are for. 
Instead we saw this lifting starting in the 2016 time period, 
and this changing of everything, the way we used to cover 
things. At CBS News, there were very strict rules we went by to 
use anonymous sources as a last resort and only with very 
certain and specific caveats and disclosures. All that has 
changed, and even, the news organizations people used to 
consider the top ones in the country, if not the world, and 
there is no overarching body that dictates how this stuff has 
to be handled.
    Chairman Johnson. As I have been trying to conduct these 
investigations over the last 6 years, one of the things I have 
certainly determined is it is an inquiring press that has 
access to sources that will not come to Congress because they 
do not trust Congress to keep their identities secure, 
confidential. So they go to the press, so the press finds out 
about this stuff a lot sooner than Congress does or, quite 
honestly, Department of Justice officials. I fully understand 
and fully support a free press and any member of the press 
protecting the confidentiality of the sources. But that is when 
they are giving them true information.
    Mr. Smith, is there an obligation to protect a source that 
has given you false information?
    Mr. Smith. Yes, I see it a little differently. I think that 
what we have seen, as I tried to describe in the opening 
statement, is an actual partnership between the press and 
people who are providing false information to prosecute a 
campaign against the Trump administration. I am very familiar 
with the left-wing bias in the media. My family, father, 
grandfather, great-grandfather, all worked in the press. I was 
the literary editor at the Village Voice, which was the first 
alternative weekly in America, co-founded by Norman Mailer. I 
come from the left. I am familiar with left-wing bias.
    What we have seen the last several years has nothing to do 
with left-wing bias. This is not about partisanship. What we 
have seen is something very disruptive and very dangerous, and 
how this started was in part because of the financial collapse 
of the prestige press, which began with the advent of the 
Internet. We have seen as a consequence the moral and 
professional collapse of the press.
    What we are talking about now is not a normal media. It is 
a platform for information operations. It is not just about 
partisanship.
    Chairman Johnson. OK. Senator Peters.
    Maybe he has blinked off, so I will go to Senator Lankford.

             OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LANKFORD

    Senator Lankford. Mr. Chairman, thank you. To our 
witnesses, thank you very much for that.
    Mr. Smith, I want to go back to that last statement that 
you made about that journalism and media has become a platform 
for disinformation in many ways. How does that get turned 
around in your perspective? You have been around media your 
whole life. How do we get accurate information? This is one of 
the top questions that I get asked by people in my State, in 
Oklahoma: How do I find out the facts?
    Mr. Smith. I mean, for all the different complaints that we 
rightly have about the Internet and even social media, there 
are different trends that are happening as well. Of course, 
there are different alternative outlets. There are different 
journalists. There are different sources for people to follow.
    If we are talking about our national prestige media like 
the brands that I talked about in my opening statement, these 
brands, these brand names, will continue to exist for as long 
as they have people who own them who do not care how much money 
they make. How to make these particular brands responsible and 
accountable again to an American public that needs sound 
information, I do not know. But I am telling you there is real 
news out there. There are people who gather news and who 
disseminate news, and I think that those figures need to be 
encouraged.
    If you are talking about what people ask you back in 
Oklahoma, I would say that one of the central things is local 
news is very important. I am not sure that anyone needs to be 
competing entirely with the Post or the Times or CNN. Local 
news is very important for people to make those decisions right 
there and to figure out what they are doing, and then the 
national news will get to them as well.
    Senator Lankford. Thank you.
    Ms. Attkisson, I wanted to be able to ask you a question 
about what you experienced personally and what was experienced 
by multiple journalists. There was an AP story in 2018, 
actually September 2018, and I want to just read a clip of this 
AP story. It was asking this question, and it said, ``Trump may 
use extraordinary rhetoric to undermine trust in the press, but 
Obama arguably went farther--using extraordinary actions to 
block the flow of information to the public.''
    ``The Obama Administration used the 1917 Espionage Act with 
unprecedented vigor, prosecuting more people under that law for 
leaking sensitive information to the public than all previous 
administrations combined. The Obama Justice Department dug into 
confidential communications between news organizations and 
their sources, as part of that effort.''
    It went through and discusses the ``20 Associated Press 
office phone lines and reporters' home and cell phones, seizing 
them without notice, as part of an investigation,'' and then 
went into what actually happened to James Rosen as well at Fox 
News.
    You experienced this as well at CBS. My question to you is: 
What should be done to an entity or an agency to hold them to 
account? Because they were never held to account for literally 
intimidating the press and for tracking the press and for 
investigating journalists through this process, tapping cell 
phones and such. What should be done in that situation to be 
able to hold an administration to account?
    Ms. Attkisson. At a minimum one would think there would be 
an apology and the people who took part in these actions would 
no longer be in a position that they could ever work in the 
government again and do these types of things. But people see 
that nothing happened to them. Why should anybody change the 
way they operate?
    In my case, this was illegal action, so obviously they 
should be prosecuted. But who is the prosecutorial authority? 
The Department of Justice and FBI who are the ones implicated, 
and since they are not going to do the job, you have somebody 
like me just to sue them, trying to bring a case in court to 
force what the Department of Justice is supposed to do 
criminally, because they are not, and then they spend all this 
taxpayer money just dragging it out by trying to get the court 
to dismiss the case.
    I think because there is no accountability, time and time 
again--and they may say, ``Oh, people need more training''; 
``we will reiterate our policies.'' This has happened over and 
over again, and they know, again, from administration to 
administration some of the same people, nothing ever happens to 
them so the behavior does not change.
    Senator Lankford. Mr. Brock, let me ask you a question as a 
follow-up to that. You have been around the FBI, been in the 
FBI, now retired from it. You still know a lot of agents. You 
know the process. What should and could be done to an agency or 
leadership or individuals when they have an abuse of power? How 
should the investigation be handled? What is missing, and why 
can't we seem to close the loop on these investigations?
    Mr. Brock. Some of what we are talking about today may not 
rise to criminal activity. Certainly violations of policy, 
departmental policy, violation of the Attorney General 
Guidelines, the executives involved were all fired, and with 
good reason, with cause. So there was some accountability 
there.
    What this Committee is doing, shedding light on the abuses 
that took place by this small kind of rogue band of executives 
at FBI headquarters, is vitally important. This is not the FBI 
I knew or worked in. This is not the FBI agents who worked 
tirelessly and analysts and other support personnel who worked 
tirelessly every day, for the good reasons that the FBI exists. 
This was a hijacking of the FBI. Again, giving respect to the 
Inspector General's conclusion of no bias, it is clear that 
there was bias involved by the text messages that were written 
by Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. It is clear by the statements 
made by former Director Comey and Deputy Director McCabe that 
they held a personal animus toward the President. There is no 
dispute on that. This investigation was clearly a malicious 
undertaking.
    Senator Lankford. The struggle that I have is I know a lot 
of great FBI agents that they are frustrated, disappointed, 
and, quite frankly, embarrassed for how leadership handled some 
of these investigations. They do not do it this way, and their 
statement over and over to me is, ``If I did as a line agent 
what James Comey did as a leader, I would have been fired and 
should have been fired.'' But they seem to be held to a 
different account than what leadership was being held to 
account in this.
    I do want to ask you one quick follow-up statement, and I 
think I know your answer on this, but I want to get 
clarification. James Comey said in his September 30 testimony 
before Judiciary that he was ``proud of the work'' done by 
Crossfire Hurricane--that was the investigation on President 
Trump, at that time Candidate Trump--and for the most part it 
was ``done by the book,'' was his word. I think for a lot of 
us, we were most shocked by his two words ``proud of it'' and 
it was ``by the book.'' Would you agree with either of those 
statements?
    Mr. Brock. I would not be proud of Crossfire Hurricane. I 
am proud of FBI agents, but, no, this was not done by the book, 
not even remotely. We keep saying it over and over again. The 
FBI cannot walk outside the door without articulating adequate 
predication to be able to interview a U.S. citizen, and we 
should all be concerned and vigilant that the FBI adheres to 
those policy guidelines. In this case they did not.
    Senator Lankford. Thank you.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Johnson. I want to thank you, Senator Lankford, 
Senator Scott, and I think Senator Hawley is on by remote, for 
attending this. I think this is part of the problem. I think 
you all understand that I have not gotten a great deal of 
support for these investigations over the last 6 years. I think 
the attendance at this hearing shows that, and what I tried to 
point out with the lack of accountability of Eric Holder being 
held in contempt of Congress--Congress is a paper tiger. The 
reason these people are not held accountable is there is no way 
to hold them accountable. Who investigates the investigator? 
Who prosecutes the prosecutors? That is an enormous problem. 
And certainly what I have come to understand in the 6 years 
trying to do this, trying to get this out, obviously the bias 
in the media, the attacks that I have had to put up with, it 
does not bother me personally. It bothers me in terms of the 
reflection and the impact on our democracy and on our freedoms. 
This is serious. Yet we have a couple Senators attending this 
hearing.
    I have my Ranking Member saying this is not even an 
appropriate hearing for this Committee to have. That is the 
problem. Senator Scott.

               OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR SCOTT

    Senator Scott. Thank you, Chairman Johnson.
    I really do believe that Americans care about corruption 
and they want to make sure that their President is not involved 
in corruption. I believe also we need to have a full 
investigation of Hunter Biden and his relationship with the 
Ukraine. I think the public deserves to know how a Vice 
President of the United States was able to force a foreign 
government to stop investigating a company that was paying his 
son $83,000 a month.
    Ms. Attkisson, can you talk a little bit about what you 
uncovered with regard to Hunter Biden and Ukraine? And then 
after you talk about that, talk about why doesn't the 
mainstream media care about this, and are they going to care 
about this assuming Joe Biden is the next President of the 
United States?
    Ms. Attkisson, can you hear me?
    Ms. Attkisson. Now I can.
    Senator Scott. Could you hear me before?
    Ms. Attkisson. No. I am sorry.
    Senator Scott. OK. I will just say it again. It was not 
that long.
    First, I believe Americans care about corruption, and I 
believe that Americans do not want to see their President 
involved in corruption. I believe all along that we need to 
have a thorough investigation of Hunter Biden and his 
relationship in the Ukraine. I believe the public needs to know 
how a Vice President of the United States was able to stop a 
foreign government from investigating a company that was paying 
his son $83,000 a month. I mean, I think that this is whatever 
the facts are, the facts ought to come out.
    Ms. Attkisson, what have you learned about Hunter Biden and 
the Ukraine, No. 1? No. 2, why hasn't the mainstream media 
cared? Assuming that Joe Biden will become the next President 
of the United States, will they start caring?
    Ms. Attkisson. I have not done as deep a dive into the 
Hunter Biden question as other journalists who have written 
really good pieces, including left-leaning publications, 
starting about a year ago this time, were doing some great 
investigations. I think that can be attributed to the fact that 
at the time there must have been people putting out the 
narrative, as they say in the news, that did not want Joe Biden 
to be the nominee or wanted somebody else, so, therefore, even 
among left-leaning political figures and so on this was 
debated. But then once Joe Biden became the nominee, it 
evaporated, at least as a discussion among the liberal press 
and left-leaning figures, and it became supposedly a conspiracy 
theory by conservatives at that point, although it was quite 
well documented and covered previously.
    I learned that there are at the very least some very 
legitimate questions to ask about conflict of interest and 
potential conflict of interest. I learned that if you 
substituted the name ``Biden'' and ``Trump'' or ``Trump's 
children'' and ``Biden's children,'' I think you would 
undoubtedly have a very different kind of media coverage than 
the lack of interest and the advocacy that comes from some of 
the media that are trying to squelch the story, the discussion 
of it, aided by social media and powerful interests who do not 
want it talked about.
    Do I think it will change under a Biden Presidency? I do 
not think so. I think there will be some criticism in the 
popular press of Joe Biden when he comes under criticism by 
others in the left-leaning, again, press or political figures, 
maybe he is not doing the right things; but he is certainly not 
going to come under the same sort of scrutiny or attacks or the 
one-sided coverage that President Trump got. I have written 
books about this showing that the false coverage, not just the 
biased coverage but the media mistakes made all the way from 
the New York Times to the Washington Post and to CNN over and 
over again, just false reporting and false information, I do 
not think we are going to see that. I think in the campaign 
that was demonstrated that we will see a whole different kind 
of news coverage with Biden for reasons that I have explained, 
with news organizations--I agree with Lee--now largely taken 
over by narratives and propaganda. We have invited the special 
political and corporate interests to use us for their talking 
points and their distribution of narratives and story lines, 
and by and large, that is what many of us have become.
    Senator Scott. Ms. Attkisson, how can somebody who believes 
they are a legitimate journalist, like Wolf Blitzer or Jake 
Tapper, not care about this? I mean, they portrayed themselves 
to be legitimate journalists that want to get to the facts, 
hold people accountable; they are very clear they want to hold 
both sides accountable. How can they continue then to not care 
about something like Hunter Biden?
    Ms. Attkisson. I worked at CNN back when it was a news 
organization, back in 1990 to 1993, and we would not have 
dreamed of covering stories--I spoke to many former CNN 
insiders in the book that I just wrote. They are all horrified 
at the turn that this once very prestigious and fairly 
straight-down-the-middle news organization has taken. You have 
to understand, if you realize that the media landscape has now 
been successfully co-opted and we have invited them in--I say 
we have been infiltrated by these interests that want to turn 
us into these mouthpieces--then you understand that when you do 
that job, you put forth a narrative, even if it proves not to 
be true, that you are given promotions and attention and your 
views are then amplified by the like-minded media and social 
media, and it feels like you are doing everything right, your 
colleagues are patting you on the back, and it just sort of 
feeds up on itself. But it has evolved into a situation where 
it is not journalism certainly as I knew it and as I think many 
Americans, if you have been around long enough, thought of 
journalism. I think it is all being redefined right now and 
changed.
    Senator Scott. So take individuals like Jake Tapper and 
Wolf Blitzer. Can they actually go back to becoming legitimate 
journalists again? Or is it just the way it is set up with 
their producers and the way CNN works and it will never go back 
to a normal investigative and, a fair media outlet?
    Ms. Attkisson. A lot of people weighed in on that when I 
interviewed them recently, including former people who were 
executives at CNN and were there, part of the discussions about 
changing the way CNN worked into what it is today. I am not an 
expert on this, but a lot of people think that it is not going 
to be able to go back to what it once was. Even though there is 
a demand, even people who want to get their left-leaning news 
from CNN and maybe their right-leaning news from Fox or 
somewhere else, they still want a place they can go that they 
feel is just telling you the story where it leads and more down 
the middle.
    But the people I spoke to, to the extent these are news 
executives who worked in the industry, they do not feel, if 
they had to guess, that CNN can go back to what it was, but 
they also do not think it survives moving forward without 
Donald Trump the villain in the way that it has been doing the 
last 4 years.
    Senator Scott. Just pretty quickly, we have had these 
hearings recently about Twitter and Facebook and places like 
that where they censor conservatives, and then they allow the 
Ayatollah or Maduro or people like that do whatever they want. 
What do you all think the impact that has on our democracy when 
a conservative cannot having anything--say much on Twitter or 
Facebook, but Maduro in Venezuela who is committing genocide 
gets his own citizens, or the Ayatollah or the Communist Party 
of China can do whatever they want? What do you all think the 
impact of that is on our democracy and the ability of us to 
actually do our jobs?
    Mr. Smith. Would you like me to answer, Senator?
    Senator Scott. Sure.
    Mr. Smith. It is laughable, of course. I mean, they have, 
Ayatollah Khamenei who tweets all the time, and he gets away 
with ``Death to Israel,'' ``Death to the United States,'' and 
the President of the United States, if you look at his Twitter 
feed now, three-quarters of it is censored. What is not 
censored is it is marked with advisories. It is preposterous. 
People see this. I mean, this is the thing. This is getting 
through to people. Outside of Washington, outside of New York, 
outside of Los Angeles, people see it is a farce. They 
understand that not just the media, they understand social 
media, they understand that the game is tilted against them, 
and people are getting angrier and angrier.
    Do I care myself personally? I think it is obscene that 
they let, Khamenei and they let, the Iranian lunatics, the 
Islamic Republic post whatever they want, and American 
conservatives are thrown off there for something ridiculous. It 
is laughable. Right? The serious thing is happening in the real 
world, off of Twitter. Americans are seeing what is happening, 
which is--it is a blessing. That is a great thing.
    Ms. Attkisson. May I say one thing?
    Senator Scott. Sure.
    Ms. Attkisson. I feel like I have looked at this issue 
quite a bit, and there is danger in the notion that sometimes 
we say, those of us who do not like the censorship that social 
media is the heavy hand that they are now using, we say, ``Why 
aren't you censoring this because you are censoring that?'' I 
personally think as a journalist the tack ought to be do not 
censor anything except that which is illegal. In other words, 
do not invite them, do not accept that they have that role. 
They never had that role before 2016 when they were lobbied by 
political and corporate interests to do what I call are fake 
fact checks and to curate our information. They created a 
market or a demand to let us invite that in because we were not 
asking for it, and now that it is here, I think we have to be 
careful not to say, well, gee, if you just censor everybody 
equally, we will be happy. I think the whole trend is bad for 
everybody and that the goal ought to be hands off of our 
information.
    Senator Scott. I agree. That makes sense.
    Chairman Johnson. By the way, I do, too. If we modify 
Section 230, from my standpoint, you retain the liability 
protection for content that is uploaded and you limit the 
liability on their ability to censor, on the moderation. They 
have to publish what those policies are. They have to be 
completely transparent, and I think people should have a cause 
of action if they are censored, if they are de-monetized, if 
they are destroyed, by them not following the very transparent 
and very open policies.
    But, with that, I will turn it over to Senator Hawley, who 
has potentially other thoughts on that issue.

               OPENING STATEMENT OF SENAOR HAWLEY

    Senator Hawley. Yes, I am glad you raised this issue, Mr. 
Chairman. I could not agree more with what you just said or, 
Ms. Attkisson, with what you just said. I think it is 
absolutely vital, and maybe we will talk about this more in 
just a second, that the social media companies not be permitted 
to be the censors of the Nation. I do not want them censoring 
anybody, unless as you say, Ms. Attkisson, I think you are 
exactly right, unless it is illegal. I mean, if it is child 
pornography, sure. But if it is political speech, no. Why 
should we entrust Mark Zuckerberg with the power of censorship.
    You are right, Mr. Chairman, the way to do this is to give 
American citizens a private right of action. Let them sue over 
the content moderation decisions as it relates to censorship. 
That would clear this up I think really quickly. But that is, 
of course, exactly what the technology companies do not want. 
They do not want any change to Section 230.
    Mr. Brock, let me come to you, if I could, to talk just a 
little bit about the FISA process. This process requires, as I 
understand it, either the Director or the Deputy Director to 
certify every FISA application.
    Now, the Judiciary Committee, on which I also sit, has had 
Director Comey, former Director Comey, and former Deputy 
Director McCabe up before the Committee, and they have 
testified, in effect, that actually this certification process 
is just a formality. You know, they did not--neither of them--
they represented they really did not read the applications; 
they did not really take it that seriously. ``Oh, it is just a 
signature on a page.''
    Is that your understanding of what the certification 
process amounts to and why it is in the statute?
    Mr. Brock. Not for this type of a case, Senator. It would 
be startling to me that an FBI Director and Deputy Director 
would treat a FISA application against a Presidential campaign 
in a nonchalant way. I would assume that they or at least their 
Chief of Staff, the Chief Counsel, would read it word by word 
and inform them to the deepest degree possible as to the nature 
and applicability of the FISA. If it was a normal FISA on a 
suspected intelligence officer of the FBI, that is one thing, 
fairly routine, fairly pro forma. But that is not what we are 
talking about here. So that stretches credulity that they would 
wave it off as, well, we just signed off on it as kind of in a 
rubber-stamp manner. That just is hard to fathom.
    Senator Hawley. As a former leader at the Bureau, Mr. 
Brock, just tell me what you think about what the FISA Court 
said when they rebuked the FBI directly and said that because 
of the misinformation and, in one case at least, outright 
falsehood that the Bureau submitted to that Court, to the FISA 
Court, as part of the FISA application process, because of 
those falsehoods and misinformation, the Court cannot trust the 
FBI's submissions in other cases that have nothing to do with 
Crossfire Hurricane.
    Have you ever heard of something like this happening? What 
does this say about the credibility of the FBI and what they 
have done in the Crossfire Hurricane case?
    Mr. Brock. This is part of the wake of damage that has been 
left by these executives, because you are exactly right, 
Senator, it calls into question every other FBI FISA 
application for vitally important cases, counterterrorism 
cases, life-and-death type of investigations. So it is 
tremendous damage.
    I do not think the Court was strong enough, frankly, in its 
condemnation of this activity. The Director's own words, 
Director Comey's own words that the dossier was salacious and 
unverified, and then two times after uttering those words, he 
signed off on a FISA application that was, by the FBI's own 
admission, but their own admission, dependent on that dossier 
for the probable cause.
    It is difficult to square what their thinking was and why 
they went forward like this, other than there was an ulterior 
motive there somewhere.
    Senator Hawley. Let me ask you about your testimony, your 
written testimony, in which you said that you are firmly of the 
view that there was insufficient evidence to justify opening 
the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. Tell us a little bit 
more about that.
    Mr. Brock. Yes, thank you, and I want to be clear here, 
because obviously I am taking a different position than what 
the Inspector General wrote in his report. But if you read that 
carefully, he interviewed the Crossfire Hurricane team members, 
and all of them spoke about the necessity of investigating 
Russian interference with the election. Nobody disputes that. 
That is clearly an FBI responsibility. Russia always tries to 
interfere with elections and other parts of our government 
activities. Nobody is disputing that.
    Crossfire Hurricane was a case that was opened against U.S. 
citizens, members of a Presidential campaign. Unprecedented. 
Never been done before. You would think it would be ``Handle 
With Care'' marked all over that decisionmaking process. But it 
does not appear that way.
    They literally took fourth-hand information--the FBI 
received information from a friendly foreign government, which 
we now know to be Australia, who in turn had a conversation 
with George Papadopoulos, who in turn received information, now 
known through Joseph Mifsud, that the Russians had suggested 
they had information damaging to the Clinton campaign.
    I am not sure how you rally all of that together to make 
sufficient predication for opening even a preliminary 
investigation, a limited investigation. They went ahead and 
opened a full investigation, which gave them the ability to use 
all of the FBI's investigative powers against U.S. citizens. As 
I pointed out earlier, not only were they relying on fourth-
hand hearsay, embedded in those statements by the Australian 
diplomat were two exculpatory statements that should have 
stopped the show right then but did not.
    Senator Hawley. Right, and we now know that the source, the 
Steele dossier, which was the principal source for the FISA 
warrants--and we have heard testimony in the Judiciary 
Committee that the FISA warrants would not have issued had it 
not have been for the Steele dossier, and we now know the 
principal source for that was, in fact, a Russian agent, I 
mean, subject to a counterintelligence investigation by the FBI 
at the time they sought the warrants. I mean, it is just--you 
cannot make this stuff up. I mean, if this were a movie, you 
would say, oh, it is totally implausible. In fact, it actually 
happened. And that is why I continue to believe this is 
potentially the biggest scandal in the FBI's history.
    Let me ask you, though, you have talked about the care with 
which this investigation was handled. It seems like it was 
handled with a lot of care by a small, tight-knit group of 
people at FBI headquarters, spearheaded by Peter Strzok. You 
have also got McCabe in there very much driving this. And that 
is unusual, right? It is unusual for an investigation of this 
nature to be launched not from a field office but at FBI 
headquarters from a very small group of people. I mean, just 
tell us about that as someone who has been part of this process 
before. Why was the procedure here and the initiation, why was 
it unusual?
    Mr. Brock. Yes, it is hard to overstate how anomalous this 
behavior was, that they would, first of all, open up a 
counterintelligence investigation into a Presidential campaign 
without incredibly substantial justification, let alone thin; 
and then, second, to embargo that investigation onto the 
seventh floor of the FBI and run it out of headquarters. The 
reason why the FBI runs its investigations in field offices, 
not in headquarters, is because headquarters is close to the 
political flame of Washington, DC. They are there for a 
different purpose. They are not there for an investigative 
purpose. The field offices handle investigations. That is where 
the experience is. That is where the sobriety is in making a 
judgment about whether there is adequate predication under the 
Attorney General Guidelines exists. They took this into the 
seventh floor, out of the Director's office, and ran this rogue 
investigation, and I would be willing to--and this is 
speculation, admittedly, but I would be willing to wager that 
many of those executives involved in that investigation had 
never read the Attorney General Guidelines, did not understand 
them.
    Senator Hawley. Thank you for your service, Mr. Brock, and 
thank you for your testimony here. I will just say, Mr. 
Chairman, I know my time has expired, but based on the 
testimony that this Committee has collected and the sensitive 
investigation that you and the Committee have pursued and the 
testimony of the Judiciary Committee has heard, I think it is 
pretty clear that there was an enormous amount of care taken in 
opening this investigation, and it was done for political 
purposes. I think it becomes increasingly clear for all the 
reasons Mr. Brock has outlined, the violation of procedural 
norms, the outright lying to the FISA Court, this was done very 
deliberately. It was done by people who did not want Donald 
Trump to be President, who did not want the 2016 election 
results to stand, and they tried to weaponize the FBI to 
interfere in a Presidential election. Sadly, they succeeded, 
and that is going to go down, I think, as one of the great 
disgraces in American history, and this Committee and this 
Senate needs to make sure it never happens again.
    Thank you for your work on this, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Johnson. Senator Hawley, first of all, I agree 
with you. If you could stick around, I want to break protocol, 
because I actually want to turn you into a witness. But I want 
to make a point based on what Mr. Brock said, because, Mr. 
Brock, you said it is completely appropriate for the FBI to 
investigate Russian interference. They knew there was Russian 
interference going on in the fact that the Clinton campaign, 
the Democratic National Committee (DNC), paid for the Steele 
dossier, which they knew was Russian disinformation. I think 
this shows the jaw-dropping bias and unequal treatment of 
justice when they continue to pursue the Trump campaign where 
they had no evidence, they had exculpatory evidence, and they 
did not lift a finger to investigate what was happening with 
the Steele dossier and the Clinton campaign.
    But, Senator Hawley, the question I want to ask you, 
because I want to talk about the difficulty we have here in 
Congress investigating these things, the resistance I have had 
to getting documents, even out of the agencies under a Trump 
Republican administration. You had the ability to interview 
both Mr. Comey and Mr. McCabe, and, by the way, you did an 
excellent job with Mr. Dorsey and Mr. Zuckerberg, particularly 
because you had whistleblower information. You had documents, 
so you could ask them some pretty hard questions, pretty 
revealing questions. My big problem in bringing either Mr. 
Comey or Mr. McCabe, any of these characters, is we have not 
had the documents.
    Can you speak to trying to prepare for your judiciary 
hearing, interviewing both Mr. Comey and Mr. McCabe? I watched 
that. There were a couple interesting revelations. But because 
you did not have documents, because you could not ask them, 
well, what did you mean in this email, how much of that 
hampered your ability to actually question them when they were 
witnesses before your Committee?
    Senator Hawley. I think there is no doubt that the 
stonewalling--and I think that is the only word that you can 
reasonably use here. The stonewalling by the FBI at both the 
Judiciary Committee and this Committee in the investigation 
into Crossfire Hurricane and the origins here has absolutely 
hampered the investigation. Of course, that has been 
deliberate. They have withheld information from us. They have 
withheld documents. We have had to threaten; we have had to 
cajole; we have had to issue subpoenas in some cases. I mean, 
you know this. This is what you have been doing.
    So to not be able to have the source material--and I will 
tell you also, we have been told over and over the Durham 
report, well, Durham is handling this, wait for Durham. The 
Senate has an oversight responsibility of its own, and the 
public has a right to know. When a Presidential election has 
been interfered with and when the FBI has been leveraged by a 
political party, in this case the Clinton campaign in 2016 
leveraging the FBI, the most powerful law enforcement body in 
the world, to interfere in a Presidential campaign, and 
successfully--they successfully did it--that is something that 
the Senate absolutely must investigate and has a right to know 
and the public has a right to be part of that process. I am 
afraid they have been effectively denied by the FBI itself, 
which to this day is refusing to turn over key documents and 
stonewalling and slow-walking. That is why I say, Mr. Chairman, 
it has just confirmed in me the conclusion that the FBI needs 
pretty fundamental reform. What Mr. Brock was just describing, 
a political atmosphere has clearly taken over in the upper 
echelons of the FBI, which is a great disservice to the field 
agents and the men and women who are out there on the line 
every day enforcing the law, investigating, bring criminals to 
justice. But you have this political group in Washington, DC, 
and what they are doing is dangerous.
    Chairman Johnson. You just set me up for my next question. 
I appreciate that. Again, I really appreciate you participating 
in this hearing and caring about it. We did not have a whole 
lot of participation. We have had a couple Democrat Senators 
blink on and blink off and not ask any questions, so they are 
not particularly inquisitive, and that is part of the problem. 
But I have made this comment a number of times, I have made 
this point, that when it comes to investigations about 
wrongdoing in the political realm, we do it completely 
backwards.
    Take a look at what happened. Take a look at the corruption 
that we now know about, about how long it took for us to get 
this level of knowledge of what happened. By the way, we are a 
long way from fully understanding this because of the 
resistance, because of the obstruction. But I would argue that 
the order of investigation ought to start--again, this is 
investigations within the political realm, wrongdoing there. It 
should start with congressional investigations. Congress ought 
to have access to all the information. I cannot tell you how 
many times the excuse has been given to me, when we have 
requested things, even under subpoena, that, we have an active 
criminal investigation, or we have a Special Counsel, or we 
have John Durham, he does not want you interfering with his 
investigation.
    The way this should work is, because from my standpoint it 
is so far more important to expose this so that the public 
understands what happened, to provide that accountability of 
public awareness as a deterrent, as opposed to a criminal 
prosecution and putting somebody in jail, because it like 
rarely happens anyway.
    I think Congress needs to first investigate, have access to 
all the information, and then if we see potential criminal 
activity, we refer those cases to the Justice Department. If 
there is a conflict there, then you set up a Special Counsel.
    We have done this completely backwards, and here we are 4 
years later and we are only now starting to uncover the extent 
of the corruption and the corruption is incredibly troubling. 
It should trouble every Member of Congress, every U.S. Senator, 
every Member of this Committee, but it obviously does not, 
because apparently corruption is partisan. If it is corruption 
on the side of your party, not worried about it. I am worried 
about it regardless.
    Mr. Brock, I want to ask you the question, really, how much 
would it really hamper a criminal investigation if Congress had 
the same information?
    Mr. Brock. Yes, I appreciate your frustration, Senator. I 
think all of us are looking for a deep level of cooperation and 
transparency from the FBI. I am not here to second-guess the 
decisions they make because there is information I do not have 
access to that can mitigate certain decisions that are made or 
color certain decisions that are made. But the Nation is 
craving transparency right now, and I think it is better for 
the FBI to rip the Band-aid off, and if there are things that 
are embarrassing to the FBI that have to be revealed, then let 
us get it over with. The Bureau has taken a beating over the 
last 3 or 4 years at the hands of some bad actors. There is no 
shame in that. There were some poor decisions made. Whether 
politically biased or not, they were poor decisions that 
dramatically impacted the American trust in the FBI. So let us 
restore that. The best road to that is complete transparency. I 
would encourage that.
    I would also encourage frankly--and this is a challenge to 
Congress. I think we have an inadequate description of what 
corruption means, political corruption means. Right now Federal 
law is fairly narrow. There are anti-bribery laws, and beyond 
that it is hard to really get at corrupt activity. Maybe we 
need a new definition. If there are family members that are 
being enriched because of someone being in office, if there are 
loans being forgiven of political officers, and it is difficult 
to prosecute that, maybe we need a new definition of corruption 
and new laws. It might be difficult for Congress to pass that 
type of legislation, but right now it is frustrating for the 
FBI to see a lot of corrupt activity and not really be able to 
take much action against it.
    Other criminal violations wound the flesh. Corruption 
wounds the soul of this Nation. It is eating away at us right 
now in a very partisan way, as you point out, Senator. I would 
encourage opening the aperture and looking at different 
activity and deciding whether or not we can tolerate that as 
corrupt activity in our country.
    Chairman Johnson. So not being an attorney, one thing I was 
surprised to find out in these investigations, particularly as 
it relates to the glaring conflict of interest of Hunter Biden 
being on Burisma's board, is we have no laws but we have 
regulations within the State Department against conflict of 
interest. They just do not apply to the Vice President and the 
President. Maybe we ought to at least change those regulations, 
if not write a law.
    But, again, I want to drill down really in terms of 
potential harm on a criminal investigation and prosecution if 
Congress gets this information. Now, again, I have never 
investigated anything other than, in my workplace, so I have 
learned a fair amount of kind of how you go about doing this, 
and it makes sense that if you really want to go after the 
kingpin, you start interviewing people lower in the 
organization. You do not necessarily want the kingpin to know 
what you are finding out.
    Mr. Brock. Correct.
    Chairman Johnson. So to me, that is the greatest harm that 
could occur against a criminal investigation if all this is 
made public in Congress. But I would argue that is well worth 
the harm to a potential criminal--because, let us face it, 
information is information. Now, maybe the kingpin is going to 
learn a little bit more about how we ought to lie to 
investigators by what he is hearing. But facts are facts, and 
you can still potentially successfully prosecute somebody and 
convict them even with just the facts.
    So am I right? Is that the way that having Congress access 
to this information, having the public aware of this, is that 
really the main harm that I might cause a criminal 
investigation? From my standpoint, that is not worth 
withholding information from the public and certainly not 4 
years.
    Mr. Brock. Understood, and thank you for that 
clarification. I understand your question better now. There is 
a traditional concern, obviously, and a tension that when you 
are bringing criminal charges against someone, that they have 
the opportunity for a fair trial, because that person may be 
acquitted, may be found innocent, or not guilty at least. There 
is a concern that a presumptive or premature release of 
information where there is a risk that that information might 
be leaked out somehow, that it could bias or impact a potential 
prosecution and a subject's determination of guilt or 
innocence.
    I would agree with you that I think there are circumstances 
where information can be securely shared with Congress. That 
has been proven through the classified committees in this 
Congress that they can keep secrets. If there is some mechanism 
that can be put in place to extend that assurance, then your 
argument is valid.
    Chairman Johnson. Again, the point I am making is I am 
willing to sacrifice the conviction for the public exposure in 
wrongdoing in the political realm. Again, as you said, a lot of 
this stuff might not, probably does not rise to a criminal act. 
But it is certainly wrongdoing. It is certainly a glaring 
conflict of interest. It is certainly a problem when it comes 
to counterterrorism issues, potential extortion. That was the 
whole reason that the FBI said, 
well--and political figures, we have to investigate these 
potential ties to Russia to Trump because imagine the blackmail 
that could be perpetrated against the Trump administration. The 
same thing is there in terms of a Biden administration as well, 
and then some. What we found out about connections to China 
Energy (CEFC), how that is tied to the Chinese Government, I 
mean, a large company just all of a sudden off the face of the 
Earth. This is troubling, and it just amazes me how the press 
has just turned a blind eye to it.
    I want to continue to drill down a little bit on the FBI 
because I am disappointed. I hate to say this, but I am very 
disappointed in Director Wray's inability to restore 
credibility and integrity to the FBI. I just am. I think the 
only way that can happen was total transparency, and he has not 
been totally transparent. I do not know whether you ever 
briefed Congress, but I know when we had the Director before 
our Committee in our annual threat hearing, at the tail end of 
that I asked him a couple questions, and the question I had for 
him--because he would always say, ``Well, this happening before 
I became Director, a lot of this.'' Here is something that 
happened under his watch, again, the predicate being we found 
out that the FBI knew the primary subsource was a suspected 
Russian agent. They knew that the Hillary Clinton campaign 
bought and paid for the Steele dossier. They knew there was 
Russian disinformation in that. They knew that as of January 
2017. They knew all of that.
    In March 2018, I believe it was, members of the FBI--we 
have the documents of how they were preparing to brief and they 
did brief the Senate Intelligence Committee and represented 
that the Steele dossier was reliable. How can that happen? I 
asked that to the Director. I did not get a very good response. 
I mean, do you understand how that could happen? This is more 
than a year later after the FBI knew full well the Steele 
dossier was far from reliable. Of course, James Comey always 
said it was salacious and unverified.
    Mr. Brock. Senator, I am going to choose my words carefully 
here. Obviously, my interests are to restore the credibility of 
the FBI and the American people. Christopher Wray I think has 
done a very good job of advancing a level of trust. I do 
agree--and I think there is frustration among retired agents 
and even agents that are currently in the FBI--that there 
should be an urgency to be transparent as nearly as possible. 
But, again, I say I do not know all the facts. I do not have 
visibility into some of the sources that may need protecting. 
There are entirely viable reasons. I cannot second-guess that.
    I do think that it is irresponsible to hear calls for 
Director Wray's removal unless there is specific cause, like 
there was for William Sessions or James Comey. I do not see any 
of that. There may be frustration with the pace of how the FBI 
was responding and pressure should be kept on. The FBI is used 
to that. They should be held to account. They should be called 
to testify and explain themselves. But there are factors that 
can come into play here.
    Chairman Johnson. Just to show you these again, do you 
think this is acceptable?
    Mr. Brock. No, and I think what you are running into there, 
Senator, frankly--and this is something that they should be 
called to account for--you have a unit or a section inside FBI 
headquarters that is doing that kind of redacting. They are 
following protocols that are lined out for them, and these are 
lower-level general schedule (GS) employees that are making 
these decisions. I do not know to what extent that is reviewed 
by higher-ups, but when I see something like that, my first 
instinct is that is just somebody following the rulebook and 
not giving a lot of thought.
    Chairman Johnson. But that is a convenient excuse for the 
people at the top to continue to obstruct.
    Mr. Smith. I would be happy to talk about what I know about 
Director Wray from my reporting. I would be happy to talk about 
it.
    Chairman Johnson. OK, because I have got kind of one final 
question for the journalists, but go ahead, Mr. Smith.
    Mr. Smith. Yes, I mean, Director Wray has been withholding 
documents since virtually the time he started. I know from my 
reporting the plot against the President that Director Wray and 
Rod Rosenstein both went in, and they asked the then-Speaker to 
not give away any documents. He is doing the same thing--he did 
the same thing in the spring and summer regarding the Michael 
Flynn case. Director Wray is anything else but an exemplum of 
transparency. There is a real problem there.
    Chairman Johnson. That I know.
    I guess my final set of questions here--I do not want to 
keep people any longer than we need to. We have heard just a 
drumbeat. As I mentioned in my opening comments, I have been 
accused, Senator Grassley has been accused, falsely, completely 
falsely, no proof because there is no proof, of accepting, 
probably soliciting Russian disinformation and disseminating it 
through these investigations. Again, nothing could be further 
from the truth. But that is the weapon they have been using 
time and time again. It has worked. It has worked, 
unfortunately, because the press carries the water and they 
keep the drumbeat up. In particular, they always talk about 
Russian interference in the 2016 election--which, by the way, I 
do not deny, I do not condone. I was way ahead of the curve 
here in my Subcommittee in Senate Foreign Relations, the 
European Subcommittee. I held hearings on Russian 
disinformation, Russian interference, an attempted coup in 
Montenegro in Europe. This is what they do. They are always 
going to do it. We always have to be on guard.
    But what I want to ask the two journalists, putting things 
in perspective--I do not know how much Russia paid for Facebook 
ads. I do not know what impact hacking the DNC server and 
distributing apparently true emails, by the way, accurate 
emails, I do not know what impact that had, but I would say it 
pales--the impact of Russian interference in our politics and 
our elections pales in comparison to the impact that Jack 
Dorsey denies of Twitter, of his censorship, of Facebook's 
censorship, of the extreme bias in the media.
    I will start with Ms. Attkisson. Do you agree with that 
assessment, that the interference, the ability of media and 
social media to impact our politics, impact our elections 
vastly, vastly outperforms anything that Russia or a foreign 
power could potentially do? Again, real quick, Ted Cruz asked 
Jack Dorsey, ``Do you have the ability to impact our 
politics?'' He said, ``No.'' I followed up. You all agree that 
Russia can use your platforms and influence our politics, which 
is why you are on guard, why you put these controls in place. 
You do not agree that you in using your own platforms in 
censorship, in search manipulation, you cannot affect our 
politics? They just all say no. It is astounding.
    But, Ms. Attkisson, what do you think of that?
    Ms. Attkisson. Only from what I have read with the final 
assessment on what Russia did in terms of purchasing some 
Facebook ads and so on, absolutely, I mean, there is no denying 
that in any way. The difference is one is considered a foreign 
national security threat and I assume is illegal, not that we 
can really yank people out of Russia and prosecute them. But 
the other, unless it is viewed through a lens that I do not 
understand, is a legal way of manipulating public opinion or 
shaping public opinion and information. I think that is the 
hard part about attacking it. The interests that are 
responsible for convincing Big Tech in 2016 to start taking 
this role that they were not interested in prior to that, the 
political and corporate interests understand how powerful this 
is and have exploited it in a very dangerous way that tends to 
potentially impact pretty much everything we see and hear and 
read and can access.
    I will end the answer to the question by saying I do think 
there are smart people working on solutions to this problem. 
There are investors and journalists and technical experts who 
are trying to make it where there will be platforms using 
perhaps blockchain technology and things I do not fully 
understand whereby information can be exchanged in a way that 
you are not de-platformed if you share the truth or you share a 
peer-reviewed published study that these powerful interests do 
not want you to read. I think some solutions and alternatives 
we will see in the next 4 years. The question is, in the 
meantime we have this very managed and controlled news and 
Internet environment that we are trying to grapple with.
    Chairman Johnson. You brought up an issue. I do not think 
enough Americans really understand the economic power in terms 
of--like small businesses. I have had to intercede a number of 
times for people who have been de-monetized or they have shut 
down their platforms, whether it is on Facebook or Twitter or 
wherever. These companies are out there to--it is kind of like 
if AT&T back in the 1950s said, ``We are not going to let you 
use our phones anymore.'' That could destroy a business 
overnight. Now, AT&T did not do that, but Facebook and these 
social media companies are.
    Mr. Smith, do you----
    Ms. Attkisson. May I quickly address how that impacts the 
news industry? Because I quoted an international news 
executive, not by name, but who spoke to me for my last book, 
who gave a very chilling quote, and he said--because of the 
fear of being de-platformed by these social media companies and 
the organized interests coming after you on social media 
appearing to generate an astroturf campaign against you, this 
guy said, ``The newsman in me want to report the truth, but the 
businessman in me says pull your punches, because what sort of 
Pyrrhic victory would it be to be able to publish something 
only to be de-platformed and have no outlet at all.'' If you 
can imagine news organizations now withholding what they see as 
the truth or honest reporting for fear of the Big Tech 
companies and social media coming after them or de-platforming 
them, then you get a sense of how effective this is at managing 
the news that we see.
    Chairman Johnson. One thing I just found out, to build on 
that point, I do not know exactly how this works, but 
apparently--I found this out from Dr. Robert Epstein who has 
been monitoring Google's influence on the campaigns--that, for 
example, the New York Post allows Google to read their gmail. 
It is kind of part of the deal so they do not get de-listed, so 
they can be up there in the search results.
    But, Mr. Smith, do you want to just speak to the point I 
made about the impact that social media and media have compared 
to foreign influence.
    Mr. Smith. Yes, I mean, Twitter notoriously buried the 
Hunter Biden story. They buried the New York Post reporting on 
the Biden family and their relationships with foreign officials 
in Ukraine and China. This is the actual election interference. 
They are shaping elections.
    Let me talk about 2016. It did not happen on Facebook with 
the Russians. The election was shaped, the issue is not Russian 
disinformation. The issue in 2016 was Clinton campaign 
disinformation. That was the fundamental thing, and that is 
what they were trying to do. They were trying to shape the 
election, and then, of course, not just the election but the 
transition team and the Presidency as well.
    I just wanted to say two other things, and that is I 
definitely agree with Sharyl about what is happening. If you 
see sometimes what appears to be random on Twitter or Facebook 
or other social media platforms, they will scold someone, they 
will suspend someone temporarily and then bring them back. This 
is meant to draw invisible red lines or disappearing red lines. 
People do not know exactly what they are not supposed to say. 
They are effectively being schooled to censor themselves. This 
is a very dangerous thing. I 100 percent agree with that.
    The last thing I wanted to say, Chairman, I am sorry that 
there is not more general interest. I know that many Americans 
find this incredibly important. I also want to say as a 
journalist, the work that you and this Committee have done, 
everything from putting out the Strzok-Page emails to the 
Hunter Biden conflict-of-interest document, it has been 
extremely important. There are lots of researchers out there, 
lots of serious journalists who are doing real work, and we 
thank you for the important and vital work that this Committee 
has done without which there is just different things we would 
not know. Really, the amount of research that has gone into 
your products, I commend you for it and thank you for it.
    Chairman Johnson. I appreciate that.
    One final point. What I learned from Dr. Epstein after this 
election, in his monitoring he found out that Google was only 
sending reminders to get out to vote to their liberal 
subscribers. Until he sent an email to the New York Post, 
knowing that Google would be watching that, saying that he had 
discovered this, then all of a sudden they started sending that 
reminder out to everybody so apparently they would not get 
caught.
    The final point I will make is, I have gone into Eastern 
Europe, the former Soviet Union countries, and it is true, one 
of the main things we emphasize there is anticorruption. Of 
course, part of the corruption is what we always talk about, 
the oligarch ownership of the media. We talk about it. How can 
we prevent the oligarchs from controlling the media and 
controlling the political message in, for example, Ukraine and 
other countries. It was not long before I kind of started 
realizing, maybe we are the pot calling the kettle black here. 
We just do not call our media moguls ``oligarchs.'' We call 
them ``billionaires.'' But isn't that part of the same problem, 
Ms. Attkisson? Isn't that true? I mean, our media giants, the 
people that control it, these are American oligarchs. They are 
American billionaires and moguls, and they exert way too much 
power that we need to figure out how to rein in. Ms. Attkisson?
    Ms. Attkisson. I have not explored the business aspect. I 
know that is a common thought. I cannot speak authoritatively 
to that. The problems I track have more to do with outside 
influences, both political and corporate, understanding the 
first two decades of this century, very clever ways to get 
their nose under the tent at news organizations and get their 
people hired and use nonprofits and LLCs and crisis management 
firms and global law firms to shape what we do effectively and 
shape the terms of what we talk about, the language we use, the 
stories we do not report. Then in 2016, after, in my view, they 
had effectively controlled much of the news landscape, they saw 
we could still get unfettered access to information online, so 
they set about in a very organized fashion to attack that 
source of information as well. That is where we are today.
    Chairman Johnson. Mr. Smith, do you have any final 
comments?
    Mr. Smith. No. I agree 100 percent with that, and that is 
why I say that what we are looking at in the media now is not 
simply about partisanship. They are serving as a platform, as a 
sword and shield for the oligarchs. You are absolutely correct. 
If you look at the major Washington media press organizations, 
the Washington Post and the Atlantic, this is precisely what is 
going on. It is not just political partisanship. These are 
platforms for oligarchs, tech oligarchs.
    Chairman Johnson. Mr. Brock, do you have any closing 
comments?
    Mr. Brock. That is a little out of my swim lane, but I will 
say----
    Chairman Johnson. I am just saying in general in terms of 
the hearing.
    Mr. Brock. Yes, in general, let me just add on, information 
is commerce. I encourage Congress to look at ways to look at 
control of information like they looked at monopoly and trust 
busting in the early part of the 20th century. Advocacy 
journalism, which is what we are stuck with right now, is a 
money maker, and it depends on clicks, it depends on--and so 
you are going to have people exercising overt censorship and 
the soft censorship that Ms. Attkisson talked about of de-
platforming people and burying things so that they cannot go 
viral.
    Overall, thank you for the opportunity, Senator. Your work 
here on the Committee, as Lee mentioned, is very important in 
exposing the bad actions that were taken by a few individuals 
in the FBI and the damage that they did as a result to the 
lives of U.S. citizens.
    Chairman Johnson. Again, I want to thank all the witnesses 
for just what you do in your careers, what you have contributed 
to our republic, and as Benjamin Franklin so famously said, it 
is a republic if we can keep it. That is a real concern when we 
see what is happening here. The abuse of power, I am highly 
concerned.
    It is disappointing we did not have greater attendance. I 
want to thank all my colleagues who did attend and asked some 
pretty thoughtful questions. Again, I want thank you for your 
thoughtful testimony.
    I will say what I intend to do is we have a pretty good 
editor that will hopefully condense down the best parts and 
edit this down. Maybe we will get more eyeballs on this 
hearing. I think it is extremely important that we do so. We 
did that with my hearing from November 19th that was all--
should have been all about the early treatment of COVID. I 
mean, what could make more sense, like Tamiflu? Yet the attacks 
on that hearing were just jaw-dropping, to the point where the 
minority witness wrote an op-ed attacking eminently qualified 
doctors who are risking their lives treating COVID patients, 
and, wrote an op-ed to the New York Times which they ran and 
then they headlined it, ``The Snake-Oil Salesmen of the 
Senate.'' Not just salesman. I mean, that is me, that goes with 
the territory to be attacking me. But to be attacking the vice 
chair of medicine from Baylor, a senior professor of 
epidemiology from Yale, a doctor who has practiced for 50 years 
and treated over 1,000 high-risk COVID patients, attacking them 
that way. I hope all of you do not get attacked for 
participating in what I think is an incredibly important 
hearing. Thank you very much for your patriotism in doing so. 
Thank you for your testimony.
    I am asking that all the documents from a press release 
that both myself and Senator Grassley released today, that they 
be entered into the record.\1\
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    \1\ The documents referenced by Senator Johnson appears in the 
Appendix on page 106.
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    I will also say that the hearing record will remain open 
for 15 days until December 18th, 5 p.m. for submission of 
statements and questions for the record.
    This hearing is adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 11:51 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.]

                            A P P E N D I X

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