Sen. Lindsey Graham attends the State of the Union address in the chamber of the House of Representatives on February 4, 2020 in Washington, D.C.
Mario Tama/Getty Images
The Justice Department is receiving information from President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer on former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, Sen. Lindsey Graham said on Sunday. Graham, a close Trump ally, said on CBS’ Face the Nation that he had a conversation with Attorney General William Barr who said the DOJ has created a process to vet information Giuliani collected in Ukraine. The senator, who denied that the DOJ is investigating the Bidens, insisted that it is important to follow that process because the information coming from Giuliani “could be Russian propaganda.”
The senator said that this concern over Russian propaganda was partly what made him decide to take a step back from his earlier plans to investigate the Bidens through the Senate Judiciary Committee. The senator said he called Barr and Sen. Richard Burr, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, after Giuliani claimed he had information on the Bidens from Ukrainian sources and said Graham should investigate.
Shortly before Graham’s appearance on Face the Nation, President Donald Trump sent out a cryptic tweet. “DeFace the Nation will tell @LindseyGrahamSC that he must start up Judiciary and not stop until the job is done. Clean up D.C. now, last chance!” Trump tweeted. “Here’s what I want to tell the president: I’m not going to be the Republican Christopher Steele,” Graham said, referring to the British former intelligence official who compiled a dossier of opposition research on Trump. When host Margaret Brennan asked whether Giuliani “is getting played by the Russians,” Graham said he didn’t know. “I’m saying that anybody who’s got any information coming from the Ukraine needs to turn it over to the intelligence community,” Graham said.
Brennan noted that “a channel being open” between Giuliani and the Justice Deparment “sounds a lot like this is in some ways a taxpayer funded oppo-research operation against Joe Biden.” But Graham denied that was the case, claiming “there are plenty of people being contacted by folks from the Ukraine.” For now, Graham said he is focused on probing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s decision to issue warrants that led to the investigation into whether Trump’s presidential campaign colluded with Russia.
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