Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley on Wednesday urged the Department of Justice and FBI to allow his committee to conduct more oversight.
Speaking from the Senate floor, the Iowa Republican said he is concerned about “the loss of faith in the ability” of the DOJ and FBI “to do their jobs free of partisan political bias.”
Grassley specifically mentioned how the two have handled former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Trump and his associates.
“Hiding from tough questions about these controversial cases is no way to reassure the public. If the department is afraid of independent oversight, that just reinforces people’s suspicions and skepticism,” Grassley said.
Grassley explained how the DOJ and FBI have not been forthcoming in numerous document requests by the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the two have tried to “severely limit” what staff can review and take notes on the documents.
Grassley specifically took issue with how the Justice Department has handled a request to declassify a memo used as the basis for a criminal referral. Earlier this month, Grassley and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told the Justice Department they believe Christopher Steele, the former British spy who helped put together the now infamous "Trump dossier," knowingly lied to federal authorities about his communications with U.S. journalists.
In criminally referring Steele, the two senators gave Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray a classified memo containing the basis for the criminal investigation.
According to Grassley, the Justice Department deferred to the FBI, and the FBI then “falsely” claimed “three of our unclassified paragraphs each contain the same, single classified fact.”
Grassley takes issue with this, because he claims the paragraphs are based on “non-government sources,” and that he has even talked with Rosenstein about the information in the paragraphs “more than once in an unsecure space and on an unsecure phone line.”
“The FBI is not acting as if this information would harm national security if released,” Grassley said, adding, “If FBI really believed this fact was classified, then the FBI and the Department should take better care to act consistent with that belief.”
“Unfortunately, I suspect something else is really going on here,” Grassley said. "It sure looks like a bureaucratic game of hide the ball, rather than a genuine concern about national security."
The Justice Department did not immediately return a request for comment.
