Not so long ago, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) claimed he was firmly behind the investigation into the 2016 election being conducted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, commenting in mid-2018:
“I’m not going down the road of saying this is some kind of exercise to frame the president.”
And yet that’s exactly what Graham is doing today, less than 24 hours after Attorney General William Barr released a four-page summary of the Mueller report that failed to fully exonerate President Donald Trump on charges of obstructing justice.
At a press conference Monday morning, Graham demanded that the Department Justice appoint another special counsel to investigate Hillary Clinton and announced the Senate Judiciary Committee he chairs would look into how the Mueller probe began.
A reporter asked the South Carolina Republican:
“You brought up [Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s] conflict of interest and you made a rousing speech at Mar-a-Lago over the weekend. Doesn’t that give an appearance of conflict of interest in your role of chairing the Senate Judiciary Committee?”
Graham replied defensively:
“You’ve got to be kidding me. Did anybody ever ask during the Clinton impeachment if a Democrat was conflicted for speaking out on behalf of the president? I am an elected political official. I am a Republican. I’m going all over the country to speak to the Republican Party. I want Trump to win. I’m chairman of the Judiciary Committee. I do my job very responsibly.
“To suggest that if you’re a Republican and you want Trump to win, you can’t do your job is absurd.”
Another reporter then inquired:
“You also golfed with him though, right?”
Graham responded:
“Yes, and I played terribly.”
Well of course you did, Lindsey! You didn’t want to show up the notoriously thin-skinned president and bring down his wrath on you. Also, you don’t try to beat someone when you’re busy sucking up to them.
If Graham wants to do something truly productive with the Senate Judiciary Committee, he should demand the immediate release of the full Mueller report and all supporting information from the two-year investigation. Otherwise, he just needs to sit and and shut up because he has nothing valuable to say.
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