Grassley Warns Durham: ‘Don’t Take Your Eye Off Government Misconduct’

Jordan Boyd reporting for The Federalist

Sen. Chuck Grassley urged Special Counsel John Durham to pursue accountability for the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice for “spreading misinformation” that perpetuated the Russia collusion hoax.

“As Durham proceeds, I’d say this: Don’t take your eye off government misconduct. The Justice Department and FBI hid critical information from the FISA court that would’ve cut against their case. They failed to correct the court record when they should’ve,” Grassley said. “Simply put, the Justice Department and FBI misrepresented information to the court. That conduct can’t be allowed to pass.”

In a speech delivered on the Senate floor on Tuesday, Grassley reviewed how Durham indicted Igor Danchenko, one of Christopher Steele’s primary sub-sources, for lying directly to the FBI, which the agency used to target Carter Page.

“This is yet another stunning fatal defect against the Obama-Biden administration’s fake predicate to investigate Trump. Specifically, yet another illustration of Justice Department and FBI failure. As a result of these failures, this country has been dragged through the mud for years,” the Iowa Republican said.

Grassley went on to document not only how “fabricated” information make its way to the top without proper scrutiny but that the basis for Steele’s dossier came from sources who were deeply embedded in Democratic politics and Hillary Clinton.

“While the Democrats were smearing Trump with false Russia allegations, they were the ones rubbing elbows with Russians and spreading false information in the media. Of course, the media gladly ran with it,” Grassley noted.

Among those who promoted the fake story was now-National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.

Grassley said he tried to sound the alarm, along with Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., about how the “Steele dossier was most likely tainted with Russian disinformation” by getting information declassified.

“One document indicates that the FBI received a U.S. intelligence report on Jan. 12, 2017, warning of an inaccuracy in the dossier related to Michael Cohen,” Grassley explained. “The report assessed that the material was ‘part of a Russian disinformation campaign to denigrate U.S. foreign relations.’”

But that didn’t stop federal agents and corrupt judges from renewing the FISA warrant targeting Page.

“A similar U.S. intelligence report arrived on Feb. 27, 2017, undercutting a key allegation against Trump. The report noted claims about Trump’s travel to Moscow in 2013 ‘were false, and that they were the product of Russian Intelligence Services infiltrat[ing] a source into the network’ of sources that contributed to the dossier,” Grassley said.

Once again, however, “just over a month later, the FISA warrant against Page was renewed a second time.”

“I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the FBI also opened a counterintelligence case on Danchenko but failed to tell the FISA court. If this fact pattern was a movie script, nobody would believe it,” Grassley said. “With Durham’s recent indictments, we now have even more proof that the Trump-Russia collusion investigation had the wrong name; it should’ve been the Clinton-DNC-Russia collusion investigation.”

Grassley also strongly chastised the corrupt corporate media and Democrats for spreading “falsehoods” that have “damaged our political discourse for decades to come.”