With the Russia collusion investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller complete, the focus has now shifted to the origins of the investigation, and the possibility of abuse of power within the FBI and Department of Justice.
Earlier this month Attorney General William Barr appointed US attorney John Durham to investigate the origins of the Russia probe, which mired the fledgling Trump administration in controversy, and dogged the president for the first two years of his presidency.
On The Todd Starnes Show Thursday, Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-Alabama) said that the time had come to “investigate the investigators,” and he’s introduced a bill to do just that.
“Let’s have an investigation,” he told Starnes. “Let’s put the facts out there for the American people to see. My prediction is we’re going to find some things going to trouble all of us. But let’s get it out there and let’s know what happened.”
“The Investigate the Investigators Act” would protect the appointment of John Durham to investigate the allegations of abuse of power within the DOJ and the Obama White House pertaining to the Russia collusion allegation in the 2016 election.
“I’m asking the question what did President Obama know and when did he know it,” Byrne said. “I want to see an investigation occur like we just had on this Russia investigation to tell us who did what when and what were the reasons.”
The Alabama congressman said that he hopes that that investigation will reveal “why this happened” and that at the very least prevent anything like it from happening again in the future.
“Imagine President Trump and his attorney general next summer investigating the campaign whoever the Democratic nominee is,” he said. “Can you imagine that he would craft the national news media if that occurred?”
Byrne said that he’s “not going to jump to a conclusion.” and he only wants an investigation so that we can “know the facts” and the facts can be put out “for the American people to see.”
“We don’t need to be going back over this failed Russian investigation,” he said. “I want to know how did that thing get started in the first place.”
The infamous Steele dossier was something that the congressman singled out as a particular red flag in the beginning of the Russia investigation, as it was used to obtain FISA warrants by the Obama administration even though it had been paid for by the Clinton campaign.
“Why would we ever take the product of a partisan political campaign as a starting point for a criminal investigation,” Byrne said. “We should never have done that.”