‘You Took It Hook, Line And Sinker’: Rand Paul Grills FBI Director Over 2016 Trump-Russia Investigation

Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul grilled FBI Director Christopher Wray Tuesday over his alleged bias in connection to the 2016 Trump-Russia investigation.

During the Crossfire Hurricane investigation launched Jul. 31, 2016, which evaluated whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, the FBI applied for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court warrants to conduct surveillance against former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page.

“If you’re not a U.S. citizen and you’re investigating someone overseas and you’re eavesdropping on them, I’m actually fine with the FISA standard,” Paul said. “But I’m not fine with the FISA standard for Americans, particularly Americans that are running for office. Particularly for the person running for the highest office who is interconnected with all kinds of countries and always will be.”

The Kentucky senator said the Intelligence agencies can “take over our political process” and advised Wray that the FISA system should be reformed to prevent American citizens from being future targets.

The senator argued that the FBI showed clear political bias toward former President Donald Trump in the midst of the investigation. He questioned Wray on whether FISA should be used on American citizens and political candidates.

Wray responded that FISA warrants should be used to investigate counterintelligence threats to the U.S. if it follows the proper “querying” and approved procedures. (RELATED: REPORT: As Promised, Biden Won’t Fire FBI Director Christopher Wray) 

“You think there was not any problem with this investigation in the Crossfire Hurricane? You think it was all completely appropriate, nobody in the chain of command was biased and it just occurred they were curious? We just indicted one of the Clinton lawyers yesterday for lying to you guys. You guys took it hook, line and sinker and said ‘oh well we’ll just investigate a major presidential candidate,’” Paul said.

“And if you don’t see there’s a problem and that we need more controls on this and that we need to somehow obey the Constitution, I would say the same for President Biden, I would say the same for a president of any party,” the senator continued. “What a crazy upturned world, the bias is there. The reason we have checks and balances with the judiciary is so we can kind of get over the potential bias that occurs in the FBI or the CIA or anywhere else.”

A federal grand jury indicted Attorney Michael Sussman Thursday, who represented the Democratic National Convention after Russia hacked its servers in 2016 for allegedly lying to the FBI that he was not acting on behalf of special clients, the Clinton campaign and Tech Executive-1, in regards to the Trump-Russia allegations.

The IG report, released Dec. 9, 2019, identified 17 errors in the FBI’s FISA applications, who withheld information that rose doubts in relation to the advisor’s connection to Russia and also failed to disclose information that rose credibility concerns about Christopher Steele, a former British spy hired by Democrats to investigate the former president.

Wray told Paul that he considers the IG report to be “unacceptable and unrepresentative” of the FBI and must be prevented in the future. He added that he placed 40 corrective measures to ensure that the FBI’s mistakes made in the FISA applications never happen again.