Executive Session
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, in 50 minutes we are voting to confirm the nominee as Director of National Intelligence. Today, I want to discuss Congressman Ratcliffe's confirmation as Director of National intelligence.
I want to congratulate that Congressman on a job well done. With this new position comes great responsibility. Congressman Ratcliffe will have tremendous power to do good and to be transparent.
I would like to remind Congressman Ratcliffe, as I have reminded many heads of departments before, transparency brings accountability, and the public's business ought to be public.
By its very nature, the intelligence community is a secretive bunch. They often operate in the shadows and have to in order to do the job that we ask them to do to protect our national security.
However, that doesn't mean when Congress asks them questions, the intelligence community has a license to withhold information.
When Congress comes knocking, the intelligence community must answer. After all, the intelligence community does not appear anywhere in the Constitution. The intelligence community is a creation of Congress; Congress isn't a creation of the intelligence community. The intelligence community answers to us and, in turn, to the American people.
Acting Director Grenell, now in that position as acting, understood that. He is perhaps one of the most transparent government officials in my time serving the great people of Iowa.
Ambassador Grenell is a breath of fresh air. Mr. Ratcliffe has some big shoes to fill; that is for sure. Luckily, he has Acting Director Grenell's example to guide him.
Mr. Grenell's short time as Acting Director has resulted in a number of very important items being declassified. For example, he and Attorney General Barr declassified dozens of footnotes from the Justice Department's inspector general's report that show how the Department of Justice and the FBI mishandled the Russian investigation.
To give some highlights of what those previously classified footnotes show, let me go through six or seven of them.
One, the Russian intelligence was aware of Steele's anti-Trump research in early July 2016, before the FBI opened Crossfire Hurricane. That means the Russians knew they could possibly use the Steele dossier as a vehicle to plant disinformation and sow chaos to undermine the American Government.
Two, the FBI had an open counterintelligence case on Steele's key source, but they failed to give that information to the FISA Court.
The FBI had intelligence that some of Steele's sources had connections to Russian intelligence. That is point three.
Point four, Steele had sources connected to the Presidential administration, and some supported Clinton, not Trump.
Five, the Crossfire Hurricane team was aware in late January 2017 that Russian intelligence may have targeted Orbis. Orbis is Steele's company.
Six, Steele's primary subsource viewed his or her contacts not as a network of sources but, rather, as simply friends that discussed current events.
Seven, two intelligence reports--one from January 12, 2017, the other from February 27, 2017--indicated that information contained within the Steele dossier was a product of Russian disinformation. This information was withheld from the FISA Court, and the FBI continued to use the Steele dossier to justify surveillance on Carter Page.
I also want to note a very interesting fact about the January 12, 2017, date. Not only did the FBI learn that the dossier, their ``central and essential'' document, was most likely filled with this Russian disinformation, they then failed to inform the FISA Court about it on the very same day that the FBI got the FISA renewal on Carter Page. Do you know what? It was renewed two more times.
My fellow Americans, what the FBI did is a complete travesty. You have to ask yourselves: Why did they do it? Well, the text messages from Strzok and Page that I made public help us better understand that question. Their animus toward Trump helped to explain why the FBI employees cut corners and didn't follow regular protocol in running their inquiry.
As I have mentioned before, Strzok's text to Page about how he will ``stop'' Trump from becoming President is very telling. But thanks to Acting Director Grenell and Attorney General Barr, these texts can now be read in a greater context.
For example, on August 15, 2016, Strzok texts Page:
I want to believe the path that you threw out for consideration in Andy's office--
And that was referring to Andrew McCabe-- that there's no way Trump gets elected--but I'm afraid we can't take that risk. It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40.
The next day, on August 16, 2016, the FBI opened the Flynn probe, code-named Crossfire Razor.
On August 17, 2016, the FBI used a briefing for Trump, who was now the Republican nominee, and Flynn to surveil Flynn for his ``mannerisms''--what is said about it, I don't know--and whether he mentioned anything about Russia.
Let's also not forget about the text from November 2016 that Senator Johnson and I made public. Those texts between Strzok and Page show that the FBI used a November 2016 briefing for Presidential transition staff as a counterintelligence operation.
For example, Strzok told Page:
He can assess if there are any new questions or different demeanor. If Katie's husband is there, he can see if there are people we can develop for potential relationships.
That is an astounding finding. Imagine if that had been done by the Democratic nominee. You wouldn't hear the end of it. In fact, they would probably call for another special counsel. Yet because it is Trump and Flynn, the media has gone largely quiet.
On January 4, 2017, the FBI wrote a closing memorandum on Flynn that said the intelligence community could find no derogatory information on him. That should have been the end of it.
Yet on the very same day that the FBI was ready to close the Flynn case, Strzok asked another FBI agent: ``Hey, if you haven't closed Razor don't do it yet.'' The case was still open at that moment and Strzok asked that it be kept open ``for now.''
Strzok then messaged Lisa Page, saying that Razor still happened to be open because of some oversight and said: ``Yeah, our utter incompetence actually helps us. 20 percent of the time.''
Then the next day, on January 5, 2017, President Obama met with Director Comey, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, Vice President Biden, and National Security Advisor Susan Rice. In that meeting, they briefed Obama on the Russia investigation.
On January 5, 2017, the very same day as the Oval Office briefing with Obama and Biden, an Obama administration official leaked the existence of the December 29, 2016, Flynn call with the Russian Ambassador. However, that leak hadn't yet been publicly reported.
Also on January 5, Obama's Chief of Staff requested to unmask Flynn. According to Deputy Attorney General Yates, when she met with Obama on that day, Obama already knew about Flynn's call with the Russian Ambassador. She was surprised that Obama knew about it already.
On January 11, 2017, U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power requested to unmask Flynn. She requested this be done seven times after the election. She ought to explain why she did that.
Then on January 12, 2017, Vice President Biden requested to unmask Flynn. That same day, the existence of Flynn's call with the Russian Ambassador was leaked and ran in the Washington Post.
Then, in February 2017, the alleged contents of the call were leaked. Those leaks are a criminal action. They are some of the many criminal leaks that occurred during the transition period and, also, the early days of the Trump administration, which were obviously designed to undermine the new administration. I assume U.S. Attorney Durham is investigating all of those leaks.
With respect to the unmasking, what I would like to know is, Why did so many Obama administration officials who were not within the intelligence field request to unmask Flynn? The sheer volume of unmasking and the timing cause me to question whether it was politically motivated.
Based on the facts that we now know, it appears that the Obama administration's top law enforcement agency, as well as the intelligence community, engaged in a coordinated effort to cut the legs from under the Trump administration before they could even get their footing. The American people have had to suffer through years of criminal leaks, innuendos, false news reports, and flatout lies--all designed to destroy the Trump administration. The Russian investigation should have closed shop early on, especially when the people they surveilled from the Trump campaign offered exculpatory evidence-- evidence which showed that the Trump campaign wasn't involved in the Democratic National Committee hack and didn't have the Russian connections the FBI thought they had. By the way, that evidence was hidden from the FISA Court by the FBI.
Obama has said DOJ and FBI must be kept independent of White House interference. Yet, based on information that we have at this point, it appears that he and Biden were much more involved in aspects of the Russia investigation than they would like to have us believe.
Ultimately, Obama and Biden will have to answer for what they knew and when they knew it. That shouldn't be a problem for the so-called most transparent administration in history, as they used to tell us all the time.
Simply said, heads need to roll over this. If they don't, the intelligence community, the Department of Justice, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation may never get the people's trust.
Where do we go from here? On May 12, 2020, I wrote a letter to Acting Director Grenell that requested a broad range of information relating to unmasking by the Obama administration. On May 19, I expanded that request with Senator Johnson. Prior to that, I wrote to the Justice Department and Mr. Grenell, requesting that the transcripts of Flynn's calls with the Russian Ambassador and Susan Rice's infamous January 20, 2017, email to herself be declassified, among other things. That email has now been declassified and casts further doubts on the FBI's actions.
I have also requested, along with Senator Johnson, underlying intelligence reports from the Russia investigation. Moreover, reports suggest that the Obama administration unmasked a lot more U.S. persons related to the Trump campaign than just General Flynn.
The responsibility to respond to these requests will now fall on Congressman Ratcliffe. Hopefully, he is as helpful to congressional oversight and public accountability as Ambassador Grenell. Let's see it all. The American public has waited long enough.
Finally, I want to remind Congressman Ratcliffe and the intelligence community of the hold I placed on William Evanina. I did that 2 years ago. I placed that hold in my capacity as chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
I have explained in detail many times before why I placed a hold on him, and I am not going to bother explaining it again, other than to mention that Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein agreed to give me the documents, and he never did. In turn, General Rosenstein blamed Director Coats, who then blamed Rosenstein.
You have heard it before--all of my colleagues have. Whether you have a Republican or Democratic administration, it is your typical bureaucratic blame game. Thanks to Acting Director Grenell and Attorney General Barr, the blame game has ended.
But, importantly, especially for future administrations and for Congressman Ratcliffe, I want to make very clear that the Judiciary Committee's jurisdiction extends to the intelligence community. Since the authorization resolution that created the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the Senate explicitly reserved for other standing committees, such as the Senate Judiciary Committee, independent authority to ``study and review any intelligence activity'' and ``to obtain full and prompt access to the product of the intelligence activities of any department or agency'' when such activity ``directly affects a matter otherwise within the jurisdiction of such committee.''
The Senate Judiciary Committee has jurisdiction over all Federal courts, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, where a lot of intelligence activity takes place. Of course, all of Congress, not just any one committee or any one Senator, has the constitutional authority over the intelligence community.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source