‘ I guaran-damn-tee you … if the shoe were on the other foot, Democrats would be eating us alive…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headline) For months, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC, has been promising to turn the tables on Democrats who sought corruptly and in bad faith to smear President Donald Trump, culminating in the recent impeachment saga.
As Republicans plan unanimously (with help, possibly from “a handful of Democrats”) to acquit Trump on Wednesday, Graham assured Republican Fox News viewers on Sunday that the Left would not be able to get away with its corrupt partisan maneuverings.
“You should expect us to do this. If we don’t do it, we’re letting you down,” he said during an appearance on “Sunday Morning Futures” with Maria Bartiromo.
“And I guaran-damn-tee you if it were a Democrat—if the shoe were on the other foot, Democrats would be eating us alive,” Graham added. “… We’re not gonna let you down.”
Graham outlined a specific set of procedures that he anticipated seeing through in the coming weeks, with three powerful Senate committees, including his own Judiciary Committee, springing into action to look at three separate but inter-related Democratic abuses of power.
“We’re gonna get to the bottom of all of this to make sure this never happens again,” Graham said. “Intel—Senate Intel—will deal with the whistleblower; Foreign Relations Committee will deal with Joe Biden’s conflict of interest; the Judiciary Committee will deal with all things FISA.
Graham already held hearings in December with Michael Horowitz, the inspector general for the Department of Justice, concerning the FBI’s abuse of the warrant application process in the FISA courts to green-light surveillance on Carter Page, an adviser on Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Horowitz’s investigation turned up a litany of concerns—among them, the lack of accountability and oversight from partisan staffers involved with the probe of since-debunked allegations that Trump colluded with Russia.
One attorney, Eric Clinesmith, likely faces criminal charges for changing an email to suggest that Page was not working with the CIA when, in fact, he was. That ultimately was used in the justification to spy on him and other Trump officials.
Graham said he plans to turn the spotlight on the very top of the FBI and Justice Department chain with the high-ranking officials who approved the warrants. Among them are former deputy attorney generals Rod Rosenstein and Sally Yates, former FBI Director James Comey and former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe.
At least some of them are also under scrutiny by the independent DOJ criminal investigation being led by special prosecutor John Durham.
In addition to chairing the Judiciary Committee, Graham also sits on the other two committees that he referenced. The Senate Intelligence Committee—chaired by Sen. Richard Burr, R-NC—will be investigating the role that his House counterpart, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., played in colluding with the so-called whistleblower, presumed to be CIA analyst and partisan activist Eric Ciaramella.
“I wanna find out how this crap started, Graham said.
“If the whistleblower is a former employee—ah, associate—of Joe Biden, I think that would be important,” he continued. “If the whistleblower was working with people on Schiff’s staff that wanted to take Trump down a year and a half ago, I think that would be important. If the Schiff-staff people helped write the complaint, that would be important.”
Additionally, the Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, will look into the concerns about the Obama administration’s questionable Ukraine dealings while allowing Joe Biden’s son Hunter to sit on the board of the corrupt Burisma energy company.
The clear conflict of interest caused U.S. efforts to combat Ukrainian corruption to instead become a “laughingstock,” Graham said. But the current presidential candidate will not be laughing when the truth comes out, he added.
“I can prove beyond any doubt that Joe Biden’s effort in the Ukraine was undercut because he let his son sit on the board of the most corrupt company in the Ukraine, and we’re not gonna give him a pass on that,” he said.
The first people who will be called to speak in that probe may be Chris Heinz, the former business partner of Hunter Biden and fellow Burisma board member Devin Archer, who disavowed all involvement when they accepted the lucrative “consulting” jobs.
George Kent, a deputy ambassador who testified in House Democrats’ impeachment hearings, also acknowledged concern within the State Department about the arrangement.
“Eventually we’ll get to Hunter Biden,” Graham said, “and I wanna know why the Obama administration did nothing about this obvious conflict of interest.”
Graham expressed his relief at the impending close to the impeachment proceedings—which many noted were painstakingly dull—and said he was glad to be turning the page.
“It’s the closest I ever wanna be to being in purgatory,” he said, “so it’s been painful.”
But as long as radical leftists are controlling the House, he said the divisive and corrupt partisanship is likely to continued. He said voters must send a clear signal in November by re-electing the president and returning the GOP to control of the lower chamber.
Even the Democrats’ senior statesmen—including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.—were no longer able to broker any deals after being hijacked by the fringe left-wing, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez, D-NY, Graham said.
“Chuck Schumer is having AOC breathing down his neck in terms of a Democratic primary,” Graham said. “Chuck Schumer is scared to death to lose his job to AOC, and that’s why this job continued in the Senate.”