A key GOP senator who helped unravel the false Russia collusion narrative declared Tuesday that new evidence introduced by Special Counsel John Durham in a criminal trial shows the FBI engaged in misconduct to carry out a "political vendetta" against Donald Trump.
Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) gave his speech on the Senate floor on the same day that an FBI agent admitted during the trial of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann that he is under criminal investigation by Durham. It was the first admission that current FBI officials face potential criminal liability.
Previously, a former FBI lawyer admitted falsifying evidence submitted to the FISA court in order to get surveillance warrants targeting the Trump campaign.
Grassley said testimony and documents submitted at the Sussmann trial showed FBI managers, including ex-Director James Comey, were "fired up" to pursue what turned out to be false allegations created by the Clinton campaign and delivered to the FBI by Sussmann that Trump had a secret communications channel to the Kremlin back in 2016.
The senator, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the FBI effort to sustain the investigation included wrongly claiming in officlal documents that the evidence for the probe came from the Justice Department when in fact it came from Sussmann, a lawyer for Hillary Clinton's campaign.
"By the looks of it, this FBI document contains false information," Grassley said.
"I fear these recent developments are just the tip of the iceberg," he added. "The FBI’s exposure to false information and actually using it for investigative purposes wreaks of a political vendetta. A get-Trump-at-all-costs attitude. Whether Sussmann is convicted or not, the evidence introduced by Durham shows serious government misconduct. Special Counsel Durham can’t let government misconduct go unpunished."
