I recently read a Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs report regarding the possible corruption and office peddling of influence that Joe Biden participated in, and which he must answer for.
I had read this report after seeing Sen. Ron Johnson give an interview in which he stated that this report, which the Committee had been working on for a long time, was released then subsequently ignored by the mainstream media. Sen. Johnson encouraged viewers to download, print and share this eye-opening report in hopes that public outcry would move the press and Congress to actually further investigate the findings of the Committee.
Below is the full text of the report as released by Sen. Johnson. Please read it, share it and tell those you share it with to pass it along in turn. Then, contact your elected Representatives in DC and demand action. Thank You!
August
10, 2020
On June 4, 2020, the Senate committee I chair granted
me the authority to issue subpoenas for records and testimony to certain
agencies and individuals relating to the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane
investigation, the “unmasking” of U.S. persons affiliated with the Trump
campaign, and allegations of the political corruption of US agencies. Two months later, after patiently trying to
work with these agencies and individuals on a voluntary basis, I have decided
to begin issuing subpoenas primarily because of my strong belief that
transparency in government is essential and that the American people have
waited too long for the truth. Also,
because Democrats have initiated a coordinated disinformation campaign and
effort to personally attack Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley
and me for the purpose of marginalizing the findings of our investigations, I
think it is important for me to lay out the history, purpose and goals of our
ongoing oversight.
A Senate resolution tasks my committee with
investigating, among other issues, “the possible existence of … corruption
or unethical practices … [and] conflicts of interest[.]” Our current investigations fall well within
this authority and have focused on two primary areas: first, allegations of
conflicts of interest within the Obama administration related to Ukraine policy
and, second, allegations of corruption within the Obama administration
affecting the 2016 election, the transition between administrations, and Obama
administration holdovers’ sabotage of the Trump administration.
My committee began investigating corruption in the
Obama administration in March 2015 when it was revealed that then-Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton was violating State Department policy, and possibly
section 793(f) of the criminal code, by her extensive use of a private e-mail
server for official and classified government business. We quickly uncovered information about how
Secretary Clinton’s private e-mail server was stored. Based on documents from the company hired to
manage her server, we discovered that the method for storing and maintaining the
server raised numerous concerns regarding security and preservation of records.
Our investigation also uncovered and made public the
extensive editing of then-FBI Director James Comey’s July 5, 2016, statement
that exonerated Secretary Clinton. We
found that edits to Comey’s statement downplayed the seriousness of her actions
in several ways. They replaced
“gross negligence” with “extremely careless.” They
weakened a conclusion that it was “reasonably likely” that foreign adversaries
gained access to Secretary Clinton’s private e-mail account by saying instead
that it was “possible.” And they removed a reference to the fact that she
engaged in “an email exchange with the President [Obama] while Secretary
Clinton was on the territory of such an adversary.” It is important to note the FBI officials who
were involved in the editing process: Andrew McCabe, James Baker, Bill Priestap,
Peter Strzok and Jonathan Moffa. This
was the same cast of characters that soon after initiated the investigation
targeting candidate Donald Trump and his campaign.
Soon after the election, President-elect Trump made
it clear that he had no intention of pursuing further investigation of
Clinton. Since my committee had already
issued an interim report on the Clinton email scandal, and she had been held
politically accountable by losing the election, I felt there was no longer any
need for our investigation to continue.
Other than documents we released for transparency and the interim
report, we never held a hearing or publicly interviewed witnesses. As far as I was concerned, the case was
closed. Little did I know that others
were only beginning their investigations and sabotage.
On Jan. 10, 2017, CNN reported that President-elect
Trump had been briefed by Comey about salacious and unverified allegations
compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. These allegations had been shopped to
multiple news outlets, who had declined to publish them. But as soon as CNN broke the story about the
director of the FBI briefing the president-elect about them, Buzzfeed decided
it had a sufficient news hook to justify publishing what became known as “the
Steele dossier.”
On Jan. 11, 2017, Ken Vogel published an article in
Politico that described a Democratic National Committee (DNC) operative working
with Ukrainian officials to conduct opposition research in 2016 on
then-candidate Trump and his campaign.
The article was largely ignored by the mainstream media, which was being
fed an unprecedented number of leaks and a narrative that Russia interfered in
the 2016 election to benefit Trump — a narrative that eventually morphed into
the claim that the Trump campaign “colluded” with Russia.
The number of news stories based on leaks from “well
placed” individuals inside government caught my attention, and I asked my staff
to do an analysis based on public reporting comparing leaks in the early days
of previous administrations. The results were revealing. On July 2, 2017, we released a report
identifying 125 leaks in the first 126 days of the Trump administration.
Many of these leaks helped fuel the false Trump-Russia
collusion narrative. As FBI Special Agent
Peter Strzok infamously described it at the time, “Our sisters have begun
leaking like mad. Scorned and worried and political, they’re kicking in to
overdrive.”
The Trump-Russian collusion narrative had taken on a
life of its own. Gen. Michael Flynn had
resigned as national security adviser, Attorney General Jeff Sessions had
recused himself from any investigation involving Russia and the Trump campaign,
and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein would eventually appoint Robert
Mueller as a special counsel to lead an investigation into the allegations of
Russian interference and collusion.
The combination of the Mueller special counsel
investigation and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s decision to task the
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence with investigating these matters
effectively shut down my committee’s access to relevant documents and key witnesses. My committee was sidelined, and our
investigation was essentially put on hold.
On July 20, 2017, then-Senate Judiciary Chairman
Grassley sent an oversight letter to Rosenstein in reaction to the Vogel
Politico article. As additional
information became public regarding possible corruption within the FBI’s
investigation, my committee reinitiated its oversight efforts, sending multiple
requests for information and documents to the FBI and the Department of Justice. In January, 2018, those oversight efforts
resulted in us obtaining, and making public, the vast majority of the highly
revealing and informative text messages between Strzok and fellow FBI agent
Lisa Page.
In early 2019, to help move both committees’
oversight forward, Senator Grassley, who by then had become chairman of the
Senate Finance Committee, and I decided to combine efforts. Between February 2019 and July 2020, we
issued a series of oversight letters to numerous individuals, organizations,
departments and agencies focusing on reported foreign influence in the 2016
election and the corrupt use of FBI investigations to sabotage the Trump
administration. Although we have
received some records in response to those requests, the response time has been
extremely slow and the information has been woefully incomplete.
Some of the slow response time and incomplete production
of records can be legitimately attributed to classification issues and
reviews. But I suspect there are other,
more nefarious explanations. I don’t
have polling data, but I doubt anyone could seriously dispute that a majority
(probably a large majority) of career bureaucrats within federal agencies voted
for Clinton and not Trump.
It was highly unusual, and a serious threat to
national security, when detailed descriptions of
President Trump’s phone conversations with the prime
minister of Australia and the president of Mexico were leaked to the press only
two weeks into his administration. My
committee’s report on leaks showed that 62 of the 125 leaks in the first 126
days of the Trump administration could affect national security. That compares to eight and nine such leaks in
the corresponding time periods of the Obama and Bush administrations,
respectively. Perhaps Sen. Chuck Schumer
was right when he presciently warned Trump before his inauguration, “You take
on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back
at you.” Senator Grassley and I are
currently learning exactly how right Senator Schumer was.
Leaks of this nature are proof that individuals
within the administration, the departments and agencies, have engaged in
activities that seek to undermine the president’s policies. The unresolved questions surrounding the
impeachment whistleblower complaint provide further evidence of this reality.
It is not hard to imagine that individuals who would
affirmatively take action to sabotage the president’s policies would also
frustrate our attempts to obtain information that could shed a negative light
on a previous or future president more to their liking — especially if they
themselves had been involved in actions we now are investigating. Some may be high-level government officials
who are still in a position to know what evidence exists, and have every incentive
to frustrate our attempts to obtain it.
Regardless of the cause, the slow-walking of producing documents for our
investigation delayed our efforts and has prompted me to begin issuing
subpoenas.
In August 2019, a whistleblower initiated a complaint
with the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) and the
Intelligence Community Inspector General.
The cooperation between HPSCI and the whistleblower remains murky,
particularly in light of HPSCI Chairman Adam Schiff’s initial denial that his
committee had contact with the whistleblower prior to the filing of the
complaint — a statement Schiff later admitted was false. We do know from public reporting that there
were connections between the whistleblower, an impeachment witness, and their
former colleagues who “coincidentally” left the executive branch and joined
HPSCI staff around the time the whistleblower complaint was filed. Unfortunately, those connections, and any
effect they might have had on the filing or pursuit of the complaint, have
never been adequately explored.
My personal knowledge of the events involving Ukraine
and the allegations that led to impeachment were detailed in my Nov. 18, 2019,
10-page letter to HPSCI Ranking Member Devin Nunes and U.S. Rep. Jim
Jordan. While the Democrats’ narrative
of the president’s wrongdoing consumed the media’s attention, the public grew
increasingly curious about the facts and circumstances surrounding former Vice
President Biden’s Ukraine responsibilities and the very obvious conflict of
interest posed by his son, Hunter Biden, serving as a member of the board of
Burisma — a Ukrainian gas company owned by an individual who is generally
viewed as highly corrupt. Because
Chairman Grassley and I were already looking into allegations involving a
Democratic National Committee operative and certain Ukrainian individuals, we
were not going to turn a blind eye to this.
We didn’t target Joe and Hunter Biden for
investigation; their previous actions had put them in the middle of it.
Many in the media, in an ongoing attempt to provide
cover for former Vice President Biden, continue to repeat the mantra that there
is “no evidence of wrongdoing or illegal activity” related to Hunter Biden’s
position on Burisma’s board. I could not
disagree more. A brief summary of the
timeline of events in Ukraine will support my assessment.
Ukraine gained its independence with the fall of the
Soviet Union in December 1991. Three years
later, in December 1994, Ukraine, the United States, the United Kingdom, and
the Russian Federation signed the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances,
in which Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for assurances against
the threat or use of force against its territorial integrity or political
independence.
Unfortunately, shedding the legacy of Soviet
totalitarianism and corruption is not an easy task. In late 2004 and early 2005, in what became
known as the Orange Revolution, large protests over widespread election fraud
and voter intimidation led to the overturning of the Ukrainian presidential
election. Roughly 10 years later, a series of protests led by a coalition of
pro-western and anti-corruption advocates resulted in what is called the
Revolution of Dignity. On Feb. 22,
2014, Ukraine’s president, Victor Yanukovych, widely
viewed as the puppet of Russian President Vladimir Putin, abdicated his office
by fleeing to Russia.
This is where the Ukrainian story of Vice President
Biden and his son, Hunter, begins.
Following the Revolution of Dignity, U.S. foreign policy was focused on
support for the prowestern, anti-corruption, and pro-democracy efforts in
Ukraine. Unfortunately, Putin had a much
different plan. Congress and the Obama
administration were acutely aware of Putin’s displeasure and his penchant for
destabilizing governments not to his liking.
As a result, U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine focused on two main
objectives: 1) security and economic assistance, and 2) advocacy for and
support of anti-corruption, judicial, and other reforms.
On April 16, 2014, Vice President Biden met with his
son’s business partner, Devon Archer, at the White House. Five days later, Vice President Biden visited
Ukraine, and the media described him as the “public face of the
administration’s handling of Ukraine.”
The next day, April 22, Archer
joined the board of Burisma. Six days
later, British officials seized $23 million from the
London bank accounts of Burisma’s owner, Mykoloa
Zlochevsky. Fifteen days later on May
13, Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma, with public reports showing
Hunter and his firm being paid $50,000 to $166,000 per month (totaling more
than $3 million over five years) for his and Archer’s board participation.
All of this initial activity in Ukraine involving the
Bidens, Hunter’s business partner, and a corrupt oligarch and his Ukrainian gas
company occurred over a period of less than a month, and within three months of
the Revolution of Dignity — a revolution against corruption in Ukraine.
Following that revolution, Ukrainian political
figures were desperate for U.S. support.
Zlochevsky would have made sure relevant Ukrainian officials were well
aware of Hunter’s appointment to Burisma’s board. Isn’t it obvious what message Hunter’s
position on Burisma’s board sent to Ukrainian officials? The answer: If you want U.S. support, don’t
touch Burisma. It also raised a host of
questions, including:
1) How
could former Vice President Biden look any Ukrainian official (or any other
world leader) in the face and demand action to fight corruption?
2) Did
this glaring conflict of interest affect the work and efforts of other U.S.
officials who worked on anti-corruption measures?
3) Did
Burisma, its owner, or representatives receive special access to, or treatment
from, U.S. agencies or officials because of Hunter Biden’s role on the board of
directors?
4) Was
there anything corrupt or unethical about the financial transactions between
Hunter Biden and Burisma?
5) How
did State Department officials responsible for promoting anti-corruption
measures in Ukraine react to Hunter Biden joining Burisma’s board of directors?
6) Exactly
when, and for what reasons, did the U.S. government decide to condition a $1
billion loan guarantee for Ukraine on the termination of Prosecutor General
Viktor Shokin?
7) What
was the reaction within the Obama administration when the replacement
prosecutor general, Yuri Lutsenko, closed the case investigation of Burisma and
its owner? Did Vice President Biden and
other U.S. government officials believe that justice had been served and their
anti-corruption efforts were successful?
In addition, the appearance of family profiteering
off of Vice President Biden’s official
responsibilities is not unique to the circumstances
involving Ukraine and Burisma. Public
reporting has also shown Hunter Biden following his father into China and
coincidentally landing lucrative business deals and investments there.
Additionally, the former vice president’s brothers and sister-in-law, Frank,
James and Sara Biden, also are reported to have benefited financially from his
work as well. We have not had the
resources to devote investigatory time to these other allegations, but I point
them out to underscore that Ukraine and Burisma seem more of a pattern of
conduct than an aberration. Given all
this public information, the press should be asking, and former Vice President
Biden should be answering, a long list of questions:
1) Why
did you meet with Devon Archer at the White House on April 16, 2014? What was discussed? Did you discuss anything
related to Ukraine, Hunter Biden, or Burisma?
2) Were
you aware that Devon Archer joined the board of Burisma six days later?
3) Were
you aware that Burisma’s owner, Mykoloa Zlochevsky, was generally viewed as a corrupt
oligarch and that his London bank account containing $23 million had been seized
by British officials only 15 days before Hunter Biden joined the board of a
company he owned?
4) Was
Hunter Biden aware that British officials had seized Zlochevsky’s bank
account?
5) When
did you first become aware of Zlochevsky’s and Burisma’s reputations for corruption?
6) Do
you believe Zlochevsky and Burisma are corrupt?
7) Were
you aware in April 2014 that Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma?
8) When
did you first become aware that Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma?
9) When
did you first become aware of how much Hunter Biden was being compensated by
Burisma?
10) Why
do you believe Burisma recruited and paid Archer and your son to be on its
board?
11) What
skills or knowledge do you believe Hunter Biden possesses that qualified him to
be on Burisma’s board and receive $50,000 to $166,000 per month for his and his
partner’s services?
12) What
exactly had Shokin done that caused you to threaten to withhold $1 billion in desperately
needed aid from Ukraine if President Poroshenko didn’t fire him?
13) What
do you know about Hunter Biden’s business dealings in China?
14) What
do you know about financial benefits your brothers and sister-in-law have
obtained because of their relationship to you?
Democrats and many in the media have mainly focused
their criticism of our investigation on the Biden component of our
oversight. This is understandable in
light of their almost maniacal devotion to ending the Trump presidency. In their current attempt to circle the wagons
around Biden, they have once again decided to weaponize a false “Russian
disinformation” narrative as a tool for attacking their political
opponents. As Chairman Grassley and I
have pointed out in rebuttals to their unfounded accusations, it is Democrats
who have sought out and disseminated Russian disinformation. It was the Democratic National Committee,
together with cutouts for the Clinton campaign, that paid for and helped peddle
the Steele dossier. And now, once again,
Democrats are falsely accusing Chairman Grassley and me of the very behavior
they themselves are engaging in.
They have introduced, and made public, Russian
disinformation into our investigatory record; we have not.
In December 2019, Department of Justice Inspector
General Michael Horowitz issued a 478page report on his investigation of the
FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act (FISA) warrant abuse. For anyone who
is willing to take the time, the report is a devastating account of investigative
and prosecutorial negligence, misconduct, and abuse of the FISA court process
by FBI and Department of Justice officials. Some of the most disturbing
revelations include an FBI attorney doctoring and using an email to mislead the
FISA court, ignoring the exculpatory evidence obtained during surreptitious
recordings of campaign officials, deciding not to provide a defensive briefing
to the Trump campaign, planting an FBI investigator in an intelligence briefing
for candidate Trump, and withholding known and significant credibility problems
related to the Steele dossier.
Shortly after the publication of Horowitz’s FISA
report, a member of my staff was reviewing classified sections of it when he
discovered four footnotes that contradicted statements by FBI officials in the
unclassified section of the report. When
I reviewed these footnotes, I immediately decided that the public had the right
to see them, and we began the process to get them declassified. Attorney General William Barr and then-Acting
Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell both deserve much credit for
making this information available to the public.
The significance of the footnotes is hard to
overstate, although many in the media simply shrugged them off. Bill Priestap, the deputy FBI director for
counterintelligence who was “ultimately responsible” for Crossfire Hurricane,
had told IG investigators that the FBI “didn’t have any indication whatsoever”
that Steele’s dossier was part of a Russian disinformation campaign. However, the footnotes revealed that the FBI
received intelligence reporting between October 2016 and February 2017 showing
that parts of the Steele dossier were, in fact, part of a Russian
disinformation campaign. This was
critical exculpatory evidence that undermined the very premise of the
investigation.
But as the FBI had done since the beginning of the Crossfire Hurricane
investigation, rather than using exculpatory information to end their
investigation, the FBI ramped it up.
Confidential human sources became FISA wiretaps; top FBI officials
argued for inclusion of the unverified and salacious Steele dossier to be
included in the body of the Obama administration’s
Intelligence Community Assessment, and finally, the FBI
investigation ballooned into a special counsel investigation. As a result, the Trump administration was
tormented for over two years by an aggressive investigation and media
speculation, all based on a false narrative.
This has taken a tremendous toll on our country.
Had the public known what the FBI knew at that time
about its Trump-Russia inquiry, it’s hard to imagine public support for
continuing the investigation, much less the appointment of a special counsel
four months later. Investigations into
Russian hacking, Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen could have — and should have —
continued using normal FBI and Department of Justice procedures. But with a sufficiently informed public, and
an FBI and Department of Justice that rigorously followed their own procedures,
this national political nightmare could have been avoided.
Which raises the question: Why wasn’t the public
properly informed? Some of the reasons
are now obvious; some are speculative.
What is obvious is that certain FBI and Justice officials were not
truthful. Also, as this committee found,
leaks during the first four months of the Trump administration helped fuel the
false narrative of Trump campaign collusion with Russia. Many in the media were either duped by, or
complicit in, using those leaks to perpetuate that false narrative.
Much evidence of corruption by Obama administration
officials has already been made public, but only a mere portion of it is
described above. The role of other Obama
administration officials and members of the intelligence community is murky —
but legitimate suspicions and questions remain and must be answered. These include:
1) Why
were so many top level Obama administration officials, including Vice President
Biden, unmasking Trump campaign and transition officials? Some of the unmasking occurred only 10 days before President
Trump’s inauguration?
2) Did
the FBI’s use of campaign and transition briefings for investigative purposes,
as well as its efforts to access presidential transition records, violate the law
or otherwise undermine faith in the peaceful transfer of power?
3) What
other intelligence reporting did the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane team ignore?
4) Did
any of these abuses precede the formal opening of Crossfire Hurricane?
5) And
of course, the overarching question: Who knew what, and when did they know it?
On July 20, 2020, reports began surfacing falsely
accusing Senator Grassley and me of accepting Russian disinformation in the
course of our investigations. The
implication was that we were being duped into disseminating derogatory
information on former Vice President Biden because Russia does not want to see
him become president. Speaker of the
House Nancy Pelosi,
Chairman Schiff, Minority Leader Schumer and Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence Vice Chair Mark Warner wrote a letter,
parroting a letter our ranking members, Sen. Ron Wyden and Sen. Gary Peters,
had written to us asking for a classified briefing on these developments.
The only problem with their overblown handwringing is
that they all knew full well that we have been briefed repeatedly, and we had
already told them that we had NOT received the alleged “Russian
disinformation.” The very transparent
goal of their own disinformation campaign and feigned concern is to attack our
character in order to marginalize the eventual findings of our
investigation. They are running the
same play, out the same playbook they have been using for the last three and a
half years.
What I have provided above is an accurate history,
summary and rationale of our investigatory efforts. Everything detailed above is already in the
public realm. None of it is Russian
disinformation. But it is a stunning
description of wrongdoing and corruption that the public has every right to
know.
As our investigation continues, more will be
uncovered and revealed. As always,
almost all of the documents we are seeking and will make public are from U.S.
sources. Everything will be carefully
verified for accuracy and veracity.
Chairman Grassley
and I will not be deterred by the false accusations despicably being made by
individuals with strong political biases and motivations. Our investigation has been, and will continue
to be, undertaken with the greatest integrity and transparency. We intend to determine and reveal the truth.
An addendum:
On the morning of Saturday, Aug. 8, I noticed an opinion
piece in the Washington Post submitted by Sen. Richard Blumenthal. It was headlined: “The threat to U.S. elections is real, and frightening. The public has a right to know.” In addition to my curiosity being peaked
by the hyperbolic headline, I was curious to read what “stunning revelations”
Senator Blumenthal might provide.
What I found corroborated what I have described above
about a coordinated effort to attack me to pre-emptively marginalize the
findings of our investigations. This
paragraph in particular needs to be responded to:
“On Wednesday, The Post reported that Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.),
chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, is moving
ahead with an investigation into presumptive Democratic presidential nominee
Joe Biden’s family using documents provided to the senator by the son of a
former KGB officer. Johnson’s actions are of such concern to the CIA, according
to news reports, that the agency has refused to brief him. Think of it:
Congress may become a forum for debunked conspiracy theories peddled by Kremlin
proxies.”
Let me first refute the specific false charges.
Senator Blumenthal claimed my committee is “using documents provided to the senator by
the son of a former KGB officer.” This is false. Not only have we have
repeatedly and publicly denied it, no one has presented evidence to the
contrary — nor can they, because there is none.
On July 1, the Washington Post reported false
allegations that a Ukrainian named Oleksandr Onyshchenko provided our committee
with information. Our Democratic
colleagues asked that day if it was true, and we quickly and unequivocally
denied it. On July 23, Politico reported
that Andrii Derkach provided our committee with information. We immediately and unequivocally denied that. My press team has shared these denials with
many reporters. And yet, for nearly a
month, these baseless allegations have been repeated. Saturday morning, they were repeated by
Senator Blumenthal. Why do the press
and Democrats continue to ignore these unequivocal denials? Have they no interest in the truth?
Let me be clear: The investigation by my committee of
allegations of conflicts of interest within the Obama administration related to
Ukraine policy and of allegations of corruption within the Obama administration
affecting the 2016 election is focused on documents and officials from U.S.
government agencies and a U.S. Democrat-linked lobbying firm. We have not
taken, nor do we possess, the documents from Ukrainians that Democrats keep
claiming.
Blumenthal then writes, “Johnson’s
actions are of such concern to the CIA, according to news reports, that the
agency has refused to brief him.” Not
only is this claim false, it is a perfect demonstration of the disinformation
technique they are using.
We have been briefed repeatedly on these issues, but
because the briefings did not support their preferred narrative, Democrats
haven’t liked what they’ve heard.
Ranking Member Sen. Gary Peters asked me to arrange yet another
intelligence briefing, which I requested from the FBI and CIA. The CIA and FBI responded that they had
provided all relevant information. Democrats then moved the goalposts, asking
the CIA for yet another briefing on other less relevant questions. The CIA has not responded, and Democrats have
not pursued the matter since May.
In addition, note Senator Blumenthal’s use of the
term, “according to news reports.” This reveals exactly what is happening
here. An “intelligence product” full of
false innuendo was produced, classified, and then leaked to the press more than
a week before Senator Grassley or I were given access to it. Many in the media dutifully reported this hot
tip. Democrats then used the media reports to repeat, distort, and embellish
the false charges. Sound familiar?
Now I know exactly how President Trump must have felt
when he first heard the false reports contained in the “Steele dossier” and
allegations that his campaign colluded with Russia. He knew these narratives were completely
false — and now so do we, thanks to the Mueller report — yet they were
repeated, distorted, and embellished to create the public demand for that
special counsel investigation.
It is neither me, Chairman Grassley, nor our
committees that are being used to disseminate
Russian disinformation. Instead, it is Democrats and the media that
have been doing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s work for him. Puppet masters in the Kremlin could not be
more pleased at the political division and discord that has been driven by the
resistance movement against President Trump.
Remember the tweet only 10 days after President Trump’s inauguration
from one of the impeachment whistleblower’s attorneys, Mark Zaid: “#coup has
started. First of many steps. #rebellion. #impeachment will follow ultimately.
#lawyers”
The left is relentless. They play for keeps, and they don’t let rules
or the truth get in their way.
Now many of the same players that engineered a
special counsel and impeachment against President Trump are brazenly teaming up
again with a different target in mind: me.
They are using the same tired old canard of Russian interference. You’d think they could come up with
something better than that, but here they are, confident they can pull it off
again. And with a compliant media, why
wouldn’t they be confident?
Let me be very clear on another point. I have no doubt Russia is continuing its
efforts to sow discord and destabilize countries and political systems
throughout the world, including here in the U.S. In Congress, I was one of the first to
recognize Russia’s menacing activities by holding three hearings related to
Russian disinformation and destabilization campaigns as chairman of the Senate
Foreign Relations Europe subcommittee back in 2015. This is how the former Soviet Union behaved,
and it should surprise no one that the Russian Federation under the leadership
of Putin would engage in the exact same type of behavior. What is surprising is that anyone would view
this as some breakthrough revelation. I
certainly do not condone it, nor do I lack an understanding of the type of
threat this poses to our democracy. As
chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs,
I am well aware of the significant efforts the Department of Homeland Security
and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have undertaken to
safeguard our elections. Congress has
also appropriated hundreds of millions of dollars and provided grants to the
states to counter these threats.
But I also try to put the threat of Russian election
interference in proper perspective, to realize we face far greater threats as a
nation, and to completely reject Democrats’ successful and repeated efforts at
weaponizing persistent Russian meddling to gain political advantage and destroy
individual reputations.
The only way I can counter these personal political attacks
is to tell the truth and continue to conduct my committee’s investigations with
the utmost integrity and transparency.
Let me repeat. We will not be
deterred by these coordinated and despicably false attacks. We intend to uncover the truth and make it
public.
Sincerely,
Senator Ron Johnson
Chairman
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