‘You Think I’m in Trump’s Pocket’: Lindsey Graham Defends His Review of Russia Probe in Fiery Senate Rant

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) delivered a fiery rant on Thursday, during which he blasted the other members of the committee and defended himself against those who think he’s in President Donald Trump’s “pocket” for leading a review of the Russia investigation.

“I know you’re frustrated, but so am I. Let me tell you why I’m frustrated,” declared Graham. “Senator [Chris] Coons came to me, I think with Senator [Cory] Booker, and said, ‘Listen, Trump is saying wild things about Mueller and the Russian hoax and all that good stuff.’ I said, ‘Yeah, he needs to knock it down a notch.’ So we introduced legislation… with Democrats to let the president know that we believe Special Counsel Mueller should be allowed to do his job and you shouldn’t fire him or any other special counsel unless you have cause.”

“The president believes he and his family were abused by the system. He’s pissed off, he thought the whole thing was a hoax. I listened to what he had to say, but I trusted Mueller to do his job. We were able to get Mueller to conclusion. Now, once we find out that the Mueller investigation was run by people who hated Trump’s guts, dripping with partisanship, nobody seems to care,” Graham continued, adding, “We can’t figure out if their hatred for Trump had any effect on their actions. Well, I don’t think you have to be that smart to put the puzzle together, but we’re going to keep trying.”

Graham said, “It matters to meet whether or not the number two guy at the FBI, [James] Comey himself, knew the document was no longer reliable and kept using it, and you can’t answer that question. None of you can. But I’m going to get the answer to that question, and I want to find out why they kept going after Flynn when everybody who looked at Flynn said he shouldn’t be part of Crossfire Hurricane.”

“We’re going to have to do that by ourselves. You all could care less. This really says a lot, I think, not good about this committee,” he blasted. “But having said that, we’re going to go wherever the evidence takes us, and I’m going to try to answer some basic questions about how it got so off the rails, and try to explain to the public why the FISA court was so upset.”

The committee chairman admitted that he doesn’t “know if anybody’s going to go to jail,” but noted “people went to jail in the Mueller investigation,” and declared, “Well I think there are some people who are real good candidates for going to jail for manipulating the FISA application process and abusing the rule of law.”

“You’ve made it abundantly clear you don’t agree with what I am doing. You think I am in Trump’s pocket. I get all that. It’s not lost on me of what you think, and I’m sad, because I like you all, but do you expect me to punt? You can forget it,” Graham concluded. “We are not going to punt. We are not going to have a rule of law for Republicans and a rule of law for Democrats.”

Watch above via C-SPAN.