Congress GOP launches counterattack on FBI’s handling of 2016 election Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Lindsey Graham wants a new special counsel to explore whether the DOJ and FBI sought to stop Trump in 2016.

Senate Republicans are ready to go on offense.

With news that the Mueller investigation found no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, two GOP chairmen are ready to turn the tables and call for an investigation of their own.


Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham said Monday that he has plans for an aggressive oversight probe and is even hoping to convince the attorney general to appoint a second special counsel. The South Carolina Republican announced Monday he will investigate whether the Justice Department and FBI influenced the 2016 election to stop Trump, arguing it has not been appropriately probed in comparison to the Trump campaign's interactions with Russian officials.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said he's ready to back him up.

Graham specifically cited the decisions made to surveil the Trump campaign in 2016 and its handling of the uncorroborated Steele Dossier.

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“I’m going to get answers to this. If no one else cares, it seems that Republicans do. Because if the shoe were on the other foot, it would be front page news all over the world. The double standard here has been striking and quite frankly disappointing,” Graham said.

He said he would issue subpoenas if he had to, but wanted to speak to ranking member Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) first. She did not have an immediate comment.

Graham's list of grievances ran long during a 30-minute new conference on Monday morning: He complained about anti-Trump bias in federal law enforcement agencies, lack of media interest in the FBI and DOJ’s handling of the election, why Trump wasn’t informed former campaign aide Carter Page was being watched and what role former FBI Director James Comey played in the saga.

And while Graham said his committee hopes to hear from Comey and other officials about the department’s handling of the election, Graham is hoping Attorney General William Barr chooses “somebody like a Mr. Mueller to look at that.” He said that would take the politics out of the equation, given that the Senate GOP investigation is unlikely to get the same sort of public support that a nonpartisan probe would receive from the public.

The investigation would look into “whether those who believed that the FBI and the Department of Justice were playing politics, that they wanted Clinton to win and Trump to lose, that somebody can satisfy them,” Graham said. “By any reasonable standard, Mr. Mueller thoroughly investigated the Trump campaign. You cannot say that about the other side of the story.”

Graham implored Barr to “understand for the country’s sake: Appoint somebody outside the current system to look into these allegations, somebody we all trust and let them do what Mr. Mueller did.”

Barr was scheduled to talk to Graham on Monday afternoon. Separately, Graham said he expects Barr to come for a public hearing to discuss his handling of the Mueller report. Graham said he will defer to Barr on whether Mueller should appear before the committee.

Democrats are urging Graham to reconsider his plans for a new investigation.

"I hope Lindsey calms down, thinks this over, gets us back on track to do substantive things where we can serve this country, rather than political scorekeeping," said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Meanwhile Feinstein was perplexed by the move.

"I don’t understand that," she said. "I don’t quite know what the purpose is. Or what he’s looking for. So, it’s a bit of a cypher for me.”

But other Republicans are supporting Graham.

Johnson said that the "American people need to understand what happened.” He described text messages between former investigators Lisa Page and Peter Strzok over Trump as a "treasure trove" and said their bias was "jaw dropping." Their text messages suggested a preference for Hillary Clinton over then-candidate Donald Trump.

"I'd like to cooperate with Sen. Graham," Johnson said. "That's exactly what the House did between the House Judiciary Committee and [House Committee on Oversight and Reform.] I think it'd make an awful lot of sense to have the Senate Oversight Committee work with the Senate Judiciary Committee to try and get those answers."

Former Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa said that House Democrats should consider joining such a probe.

“I would think that even the Democratic House would want the answers on all that stuff,” Grassley said.

The new GOP probe came amid calls from Republicans everywhere to get some investigatory payback.

But Rudy Giuliani, Trump's personal lawyer, said Monday that further investigation can be done by the Department of Justice but warned he doesn't love the idea of appointing another special counsel.

"If they do a special counsel, I’m not going to object to it," Giuliani said. "But I’m just thinking I’m not a big fan of independent counsels or special counsels or special prosecutors. I understand if it’s the president you’ve got [to] think about something like that. But if it’s not the president, the Department of Justice is perfectly capable of doing these investigations.”

The South Carolina Republican spent the weekend with Trump in Florida, even playing golf with Trump, albeit “terribly,” he said. He made pains to assert that even though he supports Trump and wants him to win reelection, he always sought to protect the Mueller probe and never believed it was a “witch hunt,” as Trump repeatedly called it.

He also said it was clear from the summary of Mueller’s report that Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee, not a “300-pound guy sitting on a bed somewhere,” a reference to Trump’s musings about who might have received DNC emails. He sought to reach out to Democrats, too, insisting that Comey’s statements on Hillary Clinton’s email investigation in the 2016 should be a part of any probe looking at the last presidential election because "if the shoe were on the other foot, Republicans would have been pretty mad about that."

But after sticking up for the Mueller probe into Trump for so long, it was clear that Graham believes he has scores to settle. He made that much clear as he touted Barr’s summary of the Mueller report as a “great day for the president," then immediately zeroed in on new targets at the Judiciary Committee.

“When it comes to the FISA warrant, the Clinton campaign, the counterintelligence investigation, it’s pretty much been swept under the rug,” Graham said. “Those days are over.”

Dareen Samuelsohn and Kyle Cheney contributed to this report.