WASHINGTON—Senate Judiciary Committee member Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, says attempts to bring former national security adviser Susan Rice to testify before his committee on her role in unmasking American citizens in the previous administration are not over.
“Absolutely not,” Sen. Graham confirmed to The Daily Caller Thursday morning.
When asked if he would go as far as a subpoena of Rice, Graham replied “I don’t know where we’ll go with her yet, but I do believe that she should be before the committee. She talks to MSNBC and she talks to CNN about what she did as national security advisor regarding unmasking. After the hearing Monday ask me that question.”
He later went on to say, “What I want to do—there’s three things I’m focused on. Whether the Russians were involved in the election in collaboration with the Trump campaign and now was there politicization of the intelligence gathering process.”
Former Obama National Security Adviser declined an invitation from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley Wednesday night to testify before Graham’s subcommittee next week saying that subcommittee ranking member Sheldon Whitehouse advised her not to do so.
Whitehouse told reporters Thursday that her presence would just serve as a distraction at the hearing and noted to TheDC that he did not think that Rice has the first-hand knowledge of the issue on unmasking Americans in foreign intelligence surveillance nets that she admitted to.
“I have no idea but it doesn’t seem that way and she wasn’t one of the witnesses we noticed at the hearing for.”
Graham responded to his Democrat counterpart on the committee saying, “We get along fine…we’re going to be fine. I think there’s another avenue of concern. I didn’t know much about unmasking. But it could be really abused. You can’t have political people going into the intelligence community releasing information inappropriately.”