Tag: Sen. Graham

Sen. Graham Compares Russia Probe To FBI Harassment Of Martin Luther King

On Wednesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) compared the FBI’s Russia investigation to 1960s-era FBI surveillance of civilc rights icons like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“It was as if J. Edgar Hoover came back to life,” Graham said. “The old FBI. The FBI that had a chip on its shoulder and wanted to intimidate people, and find out what was going on in their lives, the law be damned. Martin Luther King and just fill in the names.”

Graham made the comments during a Senate hearing with Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz, who recently released a report stating there was an adequate basis for the FBI’s investigation into ties between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia.

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‘That’s a lie’: Lindsey Graham called out for falsely claiming FBI stopped Russia’s attacks on 2016 Clinton campaign

AlterNet logoSenate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham opened up Wednesday morning’s hearing with Inspector General Michael Horowitz by falsely claiming the FBI was able to stop Russia’s attacks against the Hillary Clinton campaign, and suggested it did so early on, well before the November 2016 election.

That’s blatantly false.

Chairman Graham also appeared to imply that the FBI did so merely by contacting the Clinton campaign to warn them of Russia’s actions – and he made that claim to support his false theory that the Bureau should have told the Trump campaign it and its officials were subjects or even targets of a counterintelligence investigation to determine if they were conspiring with Russia to win the election.

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The more love Always Trumpers show, the more dangerous Trump becomes

Washington Post logoYou’ve heard of the Never Trumpers. That’s the president’s catchall slur for anyone who criticizes him or at least accurately attests to something unsavory he’s done.

But let’s talk instead for a moment about the true risk to our democracy: the Always Trumpers. These are people such as Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) and even the once-reasonable-sounding Rep. Will Hurd (R-Tex.), who excuse away any evidence of impeachment-worthy misdeeds no matter how damning.

The Always Trumpers represent a sprawling group of lackeys and co-conspirators, willing to aid, abet and (most importantly) adore President Trump no matter what he’s credibly accused of. Come hell or high crimes, Always Trumpers always truckle to Trump.

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Graham Justifies Biden Probe By Evoking 2008 Criticism Of McCain

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) justified investigating former Vice President Joe Biden based on a debunked right-wing conspiracy by invoking Biden’s past criticisms of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).

Last week, in his role as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Graham requested documents from the State Department, alleging Biden acted inappropriately “to end a [Ukrainian] investigation of the company employing his son,” Hunter Biden. The claims have previously been debunked.

Graham’s Senate-based investigation echoes the conspiracies that Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has been pursuing around the world, including the parallel track of foreign policy that led to a holdup of Ukrainian foreign aid that triggered the impeachment inquiry.

View the complete November 25 article by Oliver Willis on the National Memo website here.

GOP hypocrisy and impeachment hearings: Lindsey Graham and Devin Nunes once sang different tunes

AlterNet logoA video showing Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., during the Clinton impeachment proceedings resurfaced this week, illustrating how the Judiciary Committee chairman has reversed his stance on impeachment now that that an inquiry has been activated into President Donald Trump.

Graham, an ardent ally of President Trump, sponsored a resolution that has been co-signed by all but three Senate Republicans decrying the House impeachment probe. He told Fox News host Sean Hannity in October that any articles of impeachment against Trump should be “dismissed in the Senate without a trial.” He also called the impeachment inquiry proceedings a “lynching in every sense.”

The video from 1998, when Graham was one of the Republican House members pushing to impeach President Bill Clinton, shows that Graham was once staunchly against members of Congress dismissing impeachment before seeing all of the facts.

View the complete November 22 article by Igor Derysh from Salon on the AlterNet website here.

Lindsey Graham basks in the impeachment spotlight

The Hill logoSen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is a lawyer and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, but his favorite activity on Capitol Hill is holding court.

Every week, television cameras line up in the hallway outside Room 226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building in hopes of catching a quote from Graham that will dominate the day’s news shows — and he rarely disappoints.

Graham’s positions on President Trump widely vary. He defends Trump to the hilt on impeachment but has emerged as the harshest Republican critic on his decision to allow a Turkish attack on Kurdish allies in Syria. Graham’s criticism over Syria triggered a rebuke from the president, who said last month that Graham “would like to stay in the Middle East for the next thousand years.”

View the complete November 12 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.

Republicans Seek To Expose Ukraine Whistleblower

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) believes there is nothing wrong in calling for anonymous whistleblowers to be outed, even if it imperils their safety.

The South Carolina lawmaker instead told reporters on Tuesday that outing that person’s identity would be “very responsible.”

“The whole idea that you would use an anonymous person to generate an impeachment inquiry is dangerous to the presidency itself,” Graham told reporters on Tuesday, according to NBC News.

View the complete November 5 by Emily Singer on the National Memo website here.

Graham Says Trump Was ‘Stupid’ To Urge China Probe Of Bidens

The relationship between Donald Trump and top Trump defender Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) continued to show fissures over the weekend, when Graham criticized Trump’s public call for China to investigate 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden.

“As to asking China to look into Biden, that was stupid,” Graham told Axios’ Jonathan Swan in an interview that aired Sunday night on HBO. “Nobody believes that China would be fair to Biden, Trump, me or you, or anybody. Bad idea. That didn’t last very long.”

Graham was referencing Trump’s comment from the White House lawn, in which he openly called on Ukraine and China to investigate Biden. It was that very topic that sparked a whistleblower to come forward and report Trump’s behavior, and what prompted a House impeachment inquiry.

View the complete October 22 article by Emily Singer on the National Memo website here.

Graham-Trump rollercoaster hits dizzying speed

The Hill logoSen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has become one of President Trump’s most vociferous critics on the decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, even as he defends the White House just as loudly over the House Democratic impeachment inquiry.

Graham has flipped from Trump critic to friend throughout the president’s rise to power and time in office, but never at a more dizzying pace than in the last few days.

This week he has loudly denounced Trump for abandoning Syria’s Kurds to oncoming Turkish forces while doing everything possible to defend the president from a rising impeachment crisis.

View the complete October 11 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.

Justice Department hasn’t interviewed key Russia probe witnesses

The DOJ’s investigation into the origins of the Russia probe seems to be focusing on the intelligence community’s links with foreign sources.

For months, President Donald Trump’s allies have been raising expectations for prosecutor John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the Russia probe, predicting that he will uncover a deep state plot to stage a “coup” against the president.

Durham “is looking at putting people in jail,” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told Fox News host Sean Hannity in July. Republican Rep. Jim Jordan said Durham is about to unleash “a pile of evidence” that will “debunk” everything House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff has proclaimed for “the last two years.”

“Stuff is going to hit the fan” when Durham is done “investigating the investigators,” said Fox News personality Geraldo Rivera. “If indictments are warranted, U.S. Attorney John Durham will be bringing them,” wrote conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt.

But in the five months since Attorney General Bill Barr tapped Durham to investigate the origins of the Russia probe, and whether any inappropriate “spying” occurred on members of the Trump campaign, he has not requested interviews with any of the FBI or DOJ employees who were directly involved in, or knew about, the opening of the Russia investigation in 2016, according to people familiar with the matter.

View the complete October 5 article by Natasha Bertrand on the Politico website here.