Graham releases Crossfire Hurricane oversight transcripts, slams 'corrupt' FBI investigation

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Friday released a batch of transcripts from interviews the committee held during its investigations into Crossfire Hurricane, with committee Chair Sen. Lindsey Graham slamming the controversial FBI undertaking as "a massive system failure by senior leadership."

In a release announcing the transcript dump, Graham said that Crossfire Hurricane—a 2016-2017 FBI investigation into allegations of collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia—was "one of the most incompetent and corrupt investigations in the history of the FBI and DOJ."

"The leadership of the FBI under [James] Comey and [Andrew] McCabe was either grossly incompetent or they knowingly allowed tremendous misdeeds," Graham argued further. "There was a blind eye turned toward any explanation other than the Trump campaign was colluding with foreign powers. At every turn the FBI and DOJ ran stop signs that were in abundance regarding exculpatory information."

The transcripts, some of which involve unnamed federal officials, appeared to be offline due to technical issues late Friday afternoon. Some of the interviews remain classified, Graham acknowledged in the press release. 

Crossfire Hurricane was eventually subsumed into the Mueller special counsel investigation; that counsel found no evidence establishing collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. 

Former Deputy U.S. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein acknowledged last summer that, by August of 2017, there was no evidence linking the Trump campaign to the Russian government, even though the special counsel's investigation into that conspiracy theory continued for another year and a half past that point.