Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has vowed to launch an investigation into whether top officials at the Justice Department and the FBI plotted to carry out a “bureaucratic coup” to force President Donald Trump from office.
Graham made his pronouncement during a Sunday conversation with CBS’ “Face The Nation.” He’d been reacting to the bombshell “60 Minutes” interview with Andrew McCabe, in which the former FBI deputy director had confirmed that Justice Department officials had discussed ousting Trump in 2017 using the 25th Amendment.
McCabe also corroborated earlier reports that said Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had suggested wearing a wire when meeting with Trump ― an allegation that Rosenstein has vehemently denied.
Graham promised Sunday to “get to the bottom” of what actually happened.
“We will have a hearing about who’s telling the truth,” he told “Face The Nation.”
“It’s stunning to me that one of the chief law enforcement officers of the land ― the acting head of the FBI ― would go on national television and say, ’Oh, by the way, I remember a conversation with the deputy attorney general about trying to find if we could replace the president under the 25th Amendment,’” Graham said. “We’re a democracy. People enforce the law — can’t take it into their own hands.”
The lawmaker questioned whether what McCabe described amounted to “an attempted bureaucratic coup.”
“Was this an attempted bureaucratic coup? I don’t know. I don’t know who’s telling the truth. I know [former Deputy Attorney General Rod] Rosenstein vehemently denied it but we’re going to get to the bottom of it,” Graham said.
This isn’t the first time in recent memory that the Republican senator has suggested a “bureaucratic coup” had been plotted against President Trump.
Speaking to Fox News in September, Graham said FBI officials had tried to “taint” the 2016 presidential election in Democrat Hillary Clinton’s favor.
At the time, he called for a new special counsel to be appointed to investigate these claims.