Graham Says He'll Call People Who Signed Trump Campaign FISA Warrants

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) watches as Michael Horowitz, inspector general for the Justice Department, testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, on Dec. 11, 2019. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said he would call in every person who signed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court warrants to surveil former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

He told Fox News: “I’m going to call every person who signed the warrant application. I’m going to find out why [John] Brennan,” the former CIA director, spoke with former Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in September 2016 “to talk about the investigation.”

“We’re going to look long and hard at FISA abuse,” he said, adding that “I’m looking at [FBI Director] Christopher Wray to fire somebody at the FBI.”

“Somebody needs to go to jail,” Graham added, “and I’m looking at [U.S. Attorney John Durham] to hold people criminally accountable for the laws they broke.”

Fox News host Maria Bartiromo noted that former FBI Director James Comey signed several FISA applications, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates signed it once, and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe signed the fourth FISA warrant.

“Does President Obama know about the counter-intelligence surveillance of the Trump campaign?” Graham asked. “How much information was provided to Susan Rice,” Obama’s National Security Advisor.

“To the American people, you deserve better than this,” Graham said. “Every American should be worried about FISA.”

Graham’s comments come after Attorney General William Barr criticized Comey after he tried to downplay his role in the investigation into the Trump 2016 presidential campaign.

Comey earlier this month said that he was “seven layers” removed from the counterintelligence operation to surveil Page for as long as a year. Barr, Comey, and Graham were responding to the findings of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report that found 17 “significant errors” in how the FBI applied to surveil Page.

“The idea that this was seven layers below him is simply not true,” Barr told Fox News on Wednesday. “I think that one of the problems with what happened was precisely that they pulled the investigation up to the executive floors, and it was run and bird-dogged by a very small group of very high-level officials,” he added.

Comey had previously defended the FBI’s use of the FISA courts during the investigation into the Trump campaign, but Horowitz found that the FBI’s three investigative teams made errors and omissions when applying for the Page warrant, and the inspector general, in a Senate hearing, blasted the FBI’s “entire chain of command.”

Comey was in charge of the FBI when the surveillance campaign, which was named Operation Crossfire Hurricane, was started.

“He’s right, I was wrong,” Comey told ’Fox News Sunday‘ on the FBI’s handling of the warrant application before, adding that “I was overconfident as director in our procedures.”