Sen. Grassley Rips FBI for Abusing Their Power in Trump Investigation

While the media was doing cartwheels to avoid contemplating just how awful Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report was for the FBI and the Obama administration, Sen. Chuck Grassley of the Senate Finance Committee was making his concern known. Actually having read the report (unlike the Democratic Party spokesmen masquerading as journalists), the former chairman of the Judiciary Committee said that the FBI had committed multiple abuses of power that endangered the rights of every American.

“Anyone who values fundamental civil liberties in the United States should be disgusted and terrified by what the inspector general uncovered in today’s report on the FBI’s spying on an American citizen,” Grassley said Tuesday. “That such abuse was carried out against a citizen working on a political campaign is just that much more disturbing. Not only did the FBI use highly-invasive surveillance tools that undermined the Fourth Amendment rights of an American, it also used a counterintelligence briefing with the campaign as an intelligence gathering operation without coordinating with other intelligence community officials.”

Hey, that sounds like the kind of stuff liberal Democrats used to say. Remember that? Remember when to be a liberal meant, yes, you were in favor of big government, but you were also highly skeptical of federal law enforcement, the tools of U.S. intelligence, and the potential for abusing those powers for the purpose of partisan gain? Gee, we wonder what happened to THAT sector of liberalism.

Apparently these beliefs are easily thrown overboard as long as the target is someone like Donald Trump.

“I began raising questions about the FBI’s reliance on Christopher Steele immediately after revelations of his involvement with the FBI’s Russia probe,” Grassley continued. “We now know that the FBI failed to disclose Steele’s credibility problems and political motivations when pushing the FISA Court to grant surveillance authority based largely on his research. 

“On at least 17 separate instances, the FBI botched the FISA applications by neglecting to share exculpatory information with the officials who vetted the applications, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and simply presenting inaccurate information,” he continued. “The FBI’s job is to protect Americans, our democracy and our rights. Its actions have done great harm to the public trust and jeopardize the important work that rank-and-file agents do every day for our nation.”

It is extremely unfortunate that only Republicans can look at this report and see it for the damning indictment of the FBI that it is. Democrats are so busy latching on to the “no political bias” finding (which is the most dubious part of the whole report) that they’ve missed the important stuff.

We’re not surprised, of course. Just exasperated.