[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 197 (Tuesday, December 10, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6941-S6943]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Russia Investigation

  Madam President, I want to comment on the Horowitz report, out 
yesterday. On Monday of this week, the Justice Department inspector 
general released his report on the Justice Department and the FBI 
investigation into the debunked theory that the Trump campaign colluded 
with the Russian Government. I have pushed to shine a light on the 
origins of the FBI Russia investigation for more than 2\1/2\ years. You 
can see that it has been a long road.
  When information is embarrassing, the FBI has a way of fighting tooth 
and nail to keep it all secret, to keep it heavily classified. The FBI 
is hiding behind vague procedural excuses about protecting the 
integrity of ongoing investigations and all kinds of excuses not to 
come forth and not to let public information come forward that might 
embarrass them.
  In this case, they put up a wall. You have to keep swinging in order 
to crack that wall. I started looking into the origins of the FBI's 
corrupt Russia investigation way back in March of 2017. At that time, 
it became clear that the FBI had used Christopher Steele's work to 
investigate then-Candidate Donald Trump. This was all done even though 
the FBI knew that Steele was working for an organization called Fusion 
GPS. Fusion GPS is an opposition research firm paid for by the 
Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign. The FBI knew 
that.
  When the FBI didn't answer my questions, I used my authority as 
chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee to hold up the nomination of 
Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein. That got the Judiciary Committee a 
briefing from the FBI. It consisted of a lot of veiled half answers and 
assertions that somehow Christopher Steele was reliable. We all know 
that he wasn't reliable. I will give details on that shortly.
  In June of 2017, I asked the FBI to produce all the FISA applications 
related to its Russia investigation. After 6 months of wrangling, in 
December 2017, Senator Graham, Senator Feinstein, and I were permitted 
to review the four FISA applications in which the FBI sought authority 
to surveil former Trump campaign staffer Carter Page, as well as a 
number of classified documents relating to Mr. Steele.
  I also directed my staff to look in public places that others were 
ignoring. That led us to Mr. Steele's court filings in London. What my 
staff found was that Mr. Steele had admitted to passing some of the 
contents of his dossier far and wide to media organizations. That 
raised a very important question about whether information Steele 
gathered was open to manipulation or just part of one big feedback 
loop.
  We also learned that, according to the FBI, Steele had told the FBI 
he had not spoken to the media about his findings, and that was in 
direct contradiction to what he said in court in London.
  After reviewing all of this information, Senator Graham and I wrote a 
letter referring Mr. Steele to the FBI for potential violation of 18 
USC 1001. That section of the code makes charges of lying to the FBI. 
At the heart of our referral was an 8-page memorandum that laid out 
much of what we had learned from my investigative efforts at that 
point.
  We now know from the IG report that the FBI top brass was aware of 
Mr. Steele's statements to the British court in spring 2017, but the 
FBI never accessed those filings and never considered telling the 
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that its assurances about 
Steele's third party contacts were in fact wrong.
  As soon as the referral went out, I began pushing the FBI to 
declassify as much of those referrals as possible. The FBI resisted my 
efforts every step of the way because this is probably going to be very 
embarrassing to them.
  My fight to make information in the referral memo public was helped 
along very directly by President Trump, who declassified a memo 
prepared by the House Intelligence Committee that touched a number of 
the same topics.
  In February 2018, Senator Graham and I also wrote Inspector General 
Horowitz to call his attention to everything we had learned and request 
that he conduct a comprehensive review of improper political influence, 
misconduct, and mismanagement of the FBI's Russia investigation.
  My efforts have been based on my investigative activity and also the 
overriding need for more transparency from the American Government 
because transparency brings accountability.
  After the release of the Russia report, there had better be 
accountability. The inspector general's findings ought to concern every 
single Member of this Chamber because it concerns the American people. 
We the people have a profound, deep, and abiding respect for 
fundamental constitutional rights. These fundamental rights

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have not been granted or created by the government. Our rights are God-
given. Our rights are inalienable, and our rights are self-evident. The 
inspector general's report shows that despite all the checks we put in 
place to ensure the government will not infringe on those rights 
without proper cause, it is still possible for bad actors to lie, for 
bad actors to withhold information, and for bad actors to doctor 
documents in order to get around those safeguards to achieve their own 
goals.
  The inspector general's report has finally let some light shine on 
the wrongdoing that occurred with the Justice Department and the FBI 
during this infamous Russia investigation. Let's start then with that 
Steele dossier. The Steele dossier played a very ``central'' and 
``essential'' role in the Russia investigation, according to the 
inspector general's report. Those words, ``central'' and ``essential,'' 
come from the report.
  Before the FBI got it, they tried to open a FISA on Carter Page, and 
there wasn't enough evidence, but once the dossier was acquired, that 
was the tipping point for the FBI to tell the FISA Court that it had 
probable cause that an American citizen was an agent of a foreign 
government.
  We now know that this central and essential document was not even a 
finished product. The dossier was based on single-source reporting, and 
Steele wasn't even the original source. He had a primary subsource who 
used multiple sources who, we now know, didn't even have direct access 
to the people they were reporting on. Some of these sources were 
Russian Government officials. We are talking about many, many levels of 
hearsay.
  Well, the FBI got around to interviewing that primary subsource but 
only after the FBI opened a FISA warrant on Carter Page. Think about 
that, will you? The FBI used one of the most powerful and invasive 
investigative tools without first verifying the information it provided 
the court. The primary subsource raised the following issues: One, 
Steele had reliability issues; two, the primary subsource had not seen 
the dossier until it was made public; three, Steele misstated and 
exaggerated claims; four, the primary subsource didn't think his or her 
material would be in the report; five, much of the information in the 
dossier was based on rumors, including conversations over beers, we are 
told, or some of those conversations were made in jest; and lastly, 
six, none of this material in the dossier had been corroborated.
  After the FBI acquired this information, subsequent FISA renewals 
continued to rely on this same document that had lost all credibility, 
and everybody knew it. They had relied on the Steele information with 
no revision or notice to the court that the primary subsource 
contradicted Steele. Simply said, that is a fraud on the court. So the 
FBI couldn't get a FISA warrant until they got the dossier, and then 
they kept renewing the warrant despite very clear evidence that the 
dossier was faulty.
  It looks to me as though the FBI couldn't get their way, so they used 
whatever information they could, whether it was false or not, all to 
accomplish their goal. Their goal was pursuing an inquiry into the 
Trump campaign.
  We all know about one of Strzok's infamous text exchanges. Page said 
this in the text: ``[Trump's] not ever going to become President, 
right? Right?!''
  Strzok said: ``No. No he's not. We'll stop it.''
  These are people involved with the FBI with a very anti-Trump agenda.
  So we go back. The FBI had a plan, and they would do anything. The 
FBI would do anything to keep that plan going. The information loop was 
contaminated from the start, and nobody at the FBI seemed to give a rip 
about it. They just wanted to continue the investigation into Trump. A 
part of that investigation included using defensive briefings for the 
Trump campaign--Can you believe this?--as a means to collect 
information relative to the Russia investigation and the General Flynn 
investigation. Would you believe that the FBI decided not to 
defensively brief the Trump campaign on alleged Russian attempts to 
interfere with the election--information that served as a predicate to 
opening this inquiry? But the FBI did decide to use the briefings as an 
intelligence-gathering operation.
  Why wouldn't the FBI simply give the Trump campaign a heads-up on any 
and all threats? They were looking out for his safety. Why would they 
hide the ball? We know that they did so for prior Presidential 
campaigns, so if they did it for every Presidential campaign, why 
wouldn't they do it for Trump? Again, the FBI had a plan, and they 
would do anything to keep that plan going.
  Another disturbing finding in the report is that the FBI recorded 
Page and Papadopoulos before the FISA warrant was issued. But it is 
unclear who the FBI used to record them. Did they work for another 
government? Was it a spy?
  Both of these recordings offered exculpatory evidence that was 
withheld from the FISA Court. The FISA Court should have known this 
information, but it didn't. Included were denials that anyone 
associated with the Trump campaign was collaborating with Russia or 
with outside groups like WikiLeaks in the release of emails and, No. 2, 
that Page had never met or said one word to Paul Manafort and that 
Manafort never responded to Page's emails. To that second point, the 
dossier said that Page participated in a conspiracy with Russia to act 
as an intermediary for Manafort on behalf of the Trump campaign. None 
of that information is accurate.
  The Steele dossier served as a--again, these words--``central and 
essential role'' in the FBI's investigation, yet it was filled with 
inaccurate and very false statements. It is important to remember that 
the FBI knew all of this. They knew about those faults all the time, 
and they did nothing to apprise the FISA Court, and they had a 
responsibility to do that. In fact, as it turns out, the FBI actively 
altered documents to make a better case for themselves.
  The FBI altered documents. One FBI official altered an email from 
another government agency to say that Page ``was not a source'' for 
that agency, when, in fact, Page was with that agency.

  The FBI relied on the false statements to renew the FISA warrant. 
That means that the FBI used Page's work, apparently, for the American 
Government as evidence that he was a Russian agent. The FBI couldn't 
get their way unless they literally falsified documents to the court to 
spy on an American citizen working for the Trump campaign. That ought 
to shock everybody in this country. The conscience of every citizen 
ought to be bothered that the FBI can do that. If it can happen to 
Carter Page, it can happen to any one of us.
  The inspector general report also specifically identified 17 errors 
and omissions during the Carter Page FISA process and additional errors 
in the Woods procedures. Wrong and incomplete information was passed 
through the chain of command for those approving the FISA warrants. 
After the inspector general interviewed within the FBI chain of 
command, the inspector general had this to say:

       In most instances, the agents and supervisors told us that 
     they either did not know or recall why the information was 
     not shared with the [Office of Intelligence], that the 
     failure to do so may have been an oversight, that they did 
     not recognize at the time the relevance of the information to 
     the FISA application, or that they did not believe the 
     missing information to be significant.

  Regarding that last point, that they did not believe the missing 
information to be significant, the inspector general noted that ``we 
believe that case agents may have improperly substituted their own 
judgments in place of the judgment of [the Office of Intelligence] . . 
. or in place of the court to weigh the probative value of the 
information.''
  That is a very extraordinary finding. We all know about the 
politically charged anti-Trump texts that were exchanged among FBI 
officials who didn't want Trump elected, and they probably hate him to 
this very day, including an FBI lawyer who altered documents--an FBI 
agent did this--to support the FISA application. Clearly, that bias 
affected the decision-making process. Indeed, the inspector general 
noted that in light of the substantial and fundamental errors in the 
FISA process, there are ``significant questions regarding the FBI's 
chain of command management and supervision of the FISA process.''
  Really, it is quite obvious that something was terribly wrong. For 
example,

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Stu Evans, the DOJ National Security Division official with oversight 
of the FISA process, did not even know that Bruce Ohr, another DOJ 
official, had been in communication with the FBI about the Russia 
investigation. He didn't know that Ohr had been interviewed by the FBI 
until he saw the Grassley-Graham referral.
  Ultimately, the inspector general was not able to interview everyone 
involved in the chain of command to the extent that the inspector 
general wanted to do that. For example, James Comey and Jim Baker, the 
former FBI general counsel, did not request that their clearances be 
reinstated for the interviews. Quite obviously, they didn't want to be 
interviewed. That means the inspector general was unable to ask them 
classified questions related to their conduct.
  Comey claims that he is transparent, but he clearly wasn't in this 
case. Moreover, Glenn Simpson and Jonathan Winer--the latter a former 
State Department official--refused to sit for any interviews at all. 
These individuals played key roles in the Russia investigation. It is a 
shame that they didn't want to speak up. So can't we legitimately ask: 
What are they trying to hide? From what I have seen, they are trying to 
hide an awful lot.
  With all that said, the FBI's FISA-related behavior has been so bad 
that the inspector general has initiated a comprehensive audit that 
will fully examine the FBI's compliance with the Woods procedures. In 
the past, when there has been evidence of our government improperly 
infringing on the civil liberties of American citizens, we as a nation 
have firmly rejected that course of action. We have taken those moments 
as real opportunities to strengthen our resolve and to renew our 
commitment to the values that we all share about our God-given 
liberties and freedoms.
  Under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover, from about 1920 to 1969, 
which was when he died, the FBI would wiretap, recruit secret 
informants, and fix the paperwork in ways that trampled on the rights 
of ordinary Americans as a matter of practice. In those times of the 
FBI, it was business as usual. Let's hope it doesn't become business as 
usual now. That is why, during the 1970s, because of the abuse of J. 
Edgar Hoover, this Chamber undertook vigorous oversight efforts, under 
the leadership of the late Senator Frank Church, to shine a light on 
the excesses and abuses of our intelligence bureaucracy.
  Based on what we learned from that inquiry 40 years ago, Congress 
passed FISA. This legislation establishes protections to ensure that 
government bureaucrats can't just spy on American citizens willy-nilly, 
whenever they feel like it. In order to surveil an American citizen, 
the FBI must acquire a lawful order and do it from a court of law. We 
give those in the FBI that power along with an expectation that they 
will do their due diligence in using it.
  We have found out now, during this Russia investigation, that those 
in the FBI--in this decade--did not do that due diligence. We give this 
with the expectation that they will provide the court full and accurate 
information, which they didn't provide to the FISA court in regard to 
the Russia investigation; that they will follow the rule of law and 
their own internal guidelines; and that they will respect the 
boundaries Congress has set for them, instead of reverting to the 
freewheeling and very heavy-handed tactics that they embraced in the 
past.
  Most of the hard-working men and women in our Department of Justice 
and in our FBI today understand and truly respect these boundaries. 
However, it seems old habits really die very hard. Politics has crept 
back into the FBI's work, at least at the highest levels. The actions 
that were taken by Obama and Comey's FBI sound an awful lot like the 
ones taken under Hoover.
  Where do we go from here? We have to learn from our past mistakes. I 
have said it before, and I will say it again: Sunlight is the best 
disinfectant. Transparency brings accountability. It helps us take 
reasoned steps to ensure that the mistakes of the past will not be 
repeated in the future.
  After what I believe was far too long a wait, I am happy to have 
finally received this Horowitz report that we call the inspector 
general's report. I thank IG Horowitz and his staff for all of their 
hard work. I am pleased to see that much of the inspector general's 
report is publicly available. Once again, this is due in no small part 
to President Trump's unprecedented commitment to transparency.
  I appreciate the President's willingness to grant Attorney General 
Barr broad declassification authority, and I appreciate Attorney 
General Barr's willingness to use that authority to bring much of what 
happened out into the open. It is an important first step towards 
ensuring accountability. Of course, there are still many, many 
unanswered questions.
  In going forward, I eagerly await Mr. Durham's findings with respect 
to how the intelligence community handled its part of the corrupted 
Russia investigation. Mr. Durham is the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, 
but he has been awarded by Mr. Barr the responsibility of getting to 
the bottom of all of these problems that I am talking about now and a 
lot of other problems. Unlike Horowitz, Mr. Durham has authority to 
prosecute, and he has already opened criminal investigations.
  In the sense of Mr. Durham's work, I view this most recent inspector 
general's report as just one part in a multi-part act. Durham's public 
comments make clear that he finds issue with whether the opening of the 
Russia investigation was properly predicated. His findings may prove 
critical to finally and fully understanding what happened during the 
Obama administration's fabricated investigation into Trump.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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