Senate Judiciary Chairman: Mueller Investigation Over, Time to Investigate Its Origins

Attorney General William Barr testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 1, 2019. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images)

The Senate Judiciary Committee met on May 1 for a hearing with Attorney General Bill Barr concerning the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 elections, which was released to the public on April 18, 2019.

During the testimony, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) opened the hearing by announcing his intention to investigate law enforcement officials who supported Clinton and targeted Trump during the election. Graham stated, “once the Mueller report is put to bed, and it will be soon, this committee is going to look long and hard at how all of this started,” the Washington Examiner reported.

The Epoch Times reported that the Attorney General will initiate an “investigation of the investigators,” with a focus on two priorities: how the Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI handled their investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server to conduct official U.S. diplomacy. And secondly on why the DOJ and FBI began their investigation into allegations that President Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with the Russians against Clinton.

The Judiciary Committee Chairman demonstrated evidence of political agendas being implemented within the law enforcement community when he read aloud unclassified communications of text messages between former FBI agent Peter Strzok and DOJ attorney Lisa Page.

Graham selected a text message from August 2016, three days before Strzok was promoted to lead the FBI’s counterintelligence division, where he assured Page, who asked, “Trump’s never going to become President, right?” replying, “No, no he won’t. We will stop him!” Graham pointed out, “these are the people investigating the Clinton email situation and start the counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign.”

Graham also selected a text message from October 2016, where Strzok wrote, “I am riled up. Trump is a [expletive] idiot, is unable to provide a coherent answer.” Graham again emphasized, “These are the people who made the decision Clinton didn’t do anything wrong and that a counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign was warranted.”

Throughout 2018, the DOJ released thousands of text messages between Strzok and Page, who at that time were engaged in an affair and were openly stating their political bias in favor of Clinton and animosity toward Trump. The FBI eventually fired Strzok in July 2018 after Mueller removed him from the then ongoing Russian investigation.