Top Republican senators said Thursday that their Democratic counterparts sicced the FBI on them in 2020 to shut down their investigation into how the Justice Department bungled the Trump-Russia investigation.
Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican, said senior Democrats falsely told the FBI that he was being manipulated by Russian disinformation. When the FBI held a secret briefing for Mr. Grassley and Sen. Ron Johnson, Wisconsin Republican, it was leaked to the press to try to discredit the work the senators were doing, he said.
“It was pure nonsense that the irresponsible media portrayed as the truth,” Mr. Grassley said.
He was one of the star witnesses in the first public hearing of the House Judiciary select subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government.
The Republicans’ new panel has been tasked with exposing attempts to use the power of the government to silence vital debates and investigations.
Led by Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, the panel gives Republicans a premier forum for exploring their sense that the FBI, the Justice Department and other organs of the federal government have become biased against conservatives. That includes the belief that investigators pursued incessant and largely fruitless investigations of Donald Trump while largely ignoring accusations about President Biden and his family.
SEE ALSO: White House blasts GOP hearing on weaponization of FBI as ‘un-American’
Also at the hearing were former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who served as a Democrat from Hawaii but is now an independent, and Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat who served as his party’s invited witness.
Mr. Grassley said his fight with the weaponized government began in 2019 when, as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, he asked the Treasury Department for details of a “questionable” financial transaction that involved the Biden family.
Democrats told the FBI that Mr. Grassley and Mr. Johnson, who was chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, were being manipulated by disinformation. Parts of that letter were leaked to the press.
At the Democrats’ request, the FBI held a briefing for Mr. Grassley and Mr. Johnson, and details of that also leaked. Mr. Grassley said it was all a setup to tarnish the two Republicans’ work.
“That leak outrageously and inaccurately connected that FBI briefing to our investigation in another effort to falsely label our good government oversight work as Russian disinformation,” Mr. Grassley said.
Mr. Johnson testified that the series of leaks was a “key ingredient in the most destructive, political dirty trick in U.S. history.”
He pointed to Democrats’ first impeachment of Mr. Trump, which relied on a whistleblower who Republicans suspect was manipulated by congressional Democrats.
“The cooperation between the House intelligence committee and the impeachment whistleblower remains murky,” Mr. Johnson said.
Mr. Raskin, the Democrats’ witness, criticized the weaponization subcommittee’s existence and said Republicans are using the panel to defend Mr. Trump. That means it is Republicans who are weaponizing government, he said.
“The odd name of the weaponization subcommittee constitutes a case of pure psychological projection,” he said. “When former President Donald Trump and his followers accuse you of doing something, they’re usually telling you exactly what their own plans are.”
Mr. Raskin said Mr. Trump weaponized government when he sought to encourage Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, to rethink his state’s vote count in favor of Mr. Biden in the 2020 election.
Mr. Raskin also said Mr. Trump targeted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Black Lives Matter.
Republicans countered that the FBI was trying to shut down investigations that were producing substantive results.
• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.
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