A handful of Senate Republicans on Thursday offered support for a move by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) to get a special counsel appointed to investigate former President Obama and the 2016 election.
The Graham-Cornyn call for a special counsel comes as Republicans and the Trump administration have been upended by the controversy surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender, and President Trump has attempted to pivot away from the issue.
GOP senators didn’t draw any connection between the two concerns on Thursday while offering support for the idea of a special counsel.
“It’s like a drip, drip, drip,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said. “This kind of thing has been coming out for years now, and what’s frustrating … is there’s been no accountability for it.”
Hawley’s support for a special counsel to investigate Obama is not a huge surprise. The conservative is seen as a future potential GOP presidential candidate, and calls for an investigation of Obama will likely be popular with the Republican grassroots.
Special counsels in the past have caused problems for both political parties, however, and GOP Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) offered a cautious note.
“I’m not a big believer in special counsels, really, for the most part,” Paul said.
The libertarian from Kentucky said the Obama administration’s handling of the 2016 election, in which intelligence agencies found Russia was seeking to influence the election in Trump’s favor, did deserve scrutiny. But he questioned whether the special counsel was the right approach.
“We’ll send hundreds of millions of dollars, it’ll take four years and, really, it deserves to be discussed, it deserves to be reported.”
The call for a special counsel came after Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released two sets of documents purportedly accusing Obama and his top officials of assisting a push to undermine Trump’s 2016 bid and to tether him to Moscow.
The document Gabbard released on Thursday specifically cast doubts on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s desire to aid Trump in the race against Hillary Clinton. It did back up the argument that Russia wanted to interfere in the election, which numerous intelligence reports have stated.
The document was part of a House intelligence report dating back to when Republicans controlled the chamber and was previously classified. Although it does not dispute that Moscow interfered in the election, it sheds light on the Obama administration’s handling of Russia’s activity at the time.
A number of intelligence reviews determined that the Russians sought to influence the 2016 contest and that Putin wanted Trump to emerge victorious.
Still, GOP senators say they want more information.
“For the good of the country, we urge Attorney General [Pam] Bondi to appoint a special counsel to investigate the extent to which former President Obama, his staff and administration officials manipulated the U.S. national security apparatus for a political outcome,” Graham said in a statement.
“As we have supported in the past, appointing an independent special counsel would do the country a tremendous service in this case,” Graham continued. “With every piece of information that gets released, it becomes more evident that the entire Russia collusion hoax was created by the Obama Administration to subvert the will of the American people. Democrats and the liberal media have been out to get President Trump since 2016.”
Coloring much of the push into Obama and his top officials, however, is a wider attempt by the current administration to shift as much attention as possible away from the uproar surrounding the administration’s handling of the Epstein situation, which has divided the GOP.
The Gabbard documents served as catnip to some members who remain angry about the ongoing dialogue surrounding the 2016 election and Russian influence.
But the chatter around the Gabbard documents hasn’t fully distracted Republicans from the Epstein controversy.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) on Thursday objected to a Democratic resolution to force the Justice Department to release information on Epstein — but he unveiled his own resolution calling for courts at both the federal and state level to unseal all materials “that were part of any criminal investigation or prosecution” of Epstein or his associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
Whether it hits the floor is a question that remains unclear. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told reporters that is up to his conference.
“Obviously there’s some interest in taking action on it,” he said on Thursday. “And we’ll see how intense that feeling is.”
The renewed focus on Obama began on Tuesday when Trump told reporters that the 44th president was guilty of “treason” without providing evidence.
This prompted a rare response from the former president as a spokesperson labeled the claim “a weak attempt at distraction.” The spokesperson also noted that the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2020 backed intelligence confirming the Russians attempted to sway votes but were not successful. The committee at the time also backed up the work of the intelligence community during that time.
That panel was chaired by then-Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), now the secretary of State.
“Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response. But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one,” said Patrick Rodenbush, an Obama spokesperson. “These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction.”
