Grassley, Graham Uncover ‘Unusual Email’ Sent by Susan Rice to Herself on President Trump’s Inauguration Day
WASHINGTON – As part of their continued efforts to
conduct oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the
Department of Justice (DOJ), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Chuck
Grassley (R-Iowa) and Chairman of the Senate Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Crime
and Terrorism Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) discovered a partially
unclassified email sent by President Obama’s former National Security Advisor
(NSA) Susan Rice to herself on January 20, 2017 – President Trump’s
inauguration day.
Ambassador Rice appears to have used this email to
document a January 5, 2017 Oval Office meeting between President Obama, former
FBI Director James Comey and former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates
regarding Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election. In
particular, Ambassador Rice wrote:
“President Obama began the conversation by stressing his continued commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law enforcement communities ‘by the book’. The President stressed that he is not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective. He reiterated that our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book.”
Grassley and Graham were struck by the context and timing
of this email, and sent a follow up letter to Ambassador Rice. The letter reads
in part:
“It strikes us as odd that, among your activities in the final moments on the final day of the Obama administration, you would feel the need to send yourself such an unusual email purporting to document a conversation involving President Obama and his interactions with the FBI regarding the Trump/Russia investigation. In addition, despite your claim that President Obama repeatedly told Mr. Comey to proceed ‘by the book,’ substantial questions have arisen about whether officials at the FBI, as well as at the Justice Department and the State Department, actually did proceed ‘by the book.’”
Grassley and Graham have asked Ambassador Rice to answer
a set of questions by February 22, 2018 so the committee may further assess the
situation. The full text of their
letter is below.
February 8, 2018
VIA ELECTRONIC TRANSMISSION
The Honorable Susan Rice
Senior Fellow, Belfer Center
Harvard University
79 John F. Kennedy Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
c/o
Kathryn Ruemmler, Esq.
Latham and Watkins LLP
555 Eleventh Street NW
Washington, DC 20004
Dear Ambassador Rice:
The Senate Judiciary Committee has a constitutional duty
to conduct oversight of the FBI and the broader Department of Justice. Part of
that duty involves ensuring that law enforcement efforts are conducted without
improper political influence. Accordingly, the Committee has been investigating
the FBI’s relationship with Christopher Steele during the time his work was
funded by Hillary for America and the Democratic National Committee, as well as
the FBI’s reliance on his unverified third-hand allegations in the Bureau’s
representations to courts.
As part of that effort, the Committee sent a request to
the National Archives for records of meetings between President Obama and
then-FBI Director Comey regarding the FBI’s investigation of allegations of
collusion between associates of Mr. Trump and the Russian government. In
response, the Committee received classified and unclassified versions of an
email you sent to yourself on January 20, 2017 – President Trump’s inauguration
day. If the timestamp is correct, you sent this email to yourself at 12:15pm,
presumably a very short time before you departed the White House for the last
time.
In this email to yourself, you purport to document a
meeting that had taken place more than two weeks before, on January 5, 2017.
You wrote:
On January 5, following a
briefing by IC leadership on Russian hacking during the 2016 Presidential
election, President Obama had a brief follow-on conversation with FBI Director
Jim Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates in the Oval Office. Vice
President Biden and I were also present.
That meeting reportedly included a discussion of the
Steele dossier and the FBI’s investigation of its claims.[1] Your email
continued:
President Obama began the
conversation by stressing his continued commitment to ensuring that every
aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law enforcement
communities “by the book”. The President stressed that he is not asking about,
initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective. He
reiterated that our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would
by the book.
From a national security
perspective, however, President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we
engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any
reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia.
The next part of your email remains classified. After
that, you wrote:
The President asked Comey to inform
him if anything changes in the next few weeks that should affect how we share
classified information with the incoming team. Comey said he would.
It strikes us as odd that, among your activities in the
final moments on the final day of the Obama administration, you would feel the
need to send yourself such an unusual email purporting to document a
conversation involving President Obama and his interactions with the FBI
regarding the Trump/Russia investigation. In addition, despite your claim that
President Obama repeatedly told Mr. Comey to proceed “by the book,” substantial
questions have arisen about whether officials at the FBI, as well as at the
Justice Department and the State Department, actually did proceed “by the
book.”
In order for the Committee to further assess the
situation, please respond to the following by February 22, 2018:
1.
Did you send the email attached to this letter
to yourself? Do you have any reason to dispute the timestamp of the email?
2.
When did you first become aware of the FBI’s
investigation into allegations of collusion between Mr. Trump’s associates and
Russia?
3.
When did you become aware of any surveillance
activities, including FISA applications, undertaken by the FBI in conducting
that investigation? At the time you wrote this email to yourself, were you
aware of either the October 2016 FISA application for surveillance of Carter
Page or the January 2017 renewal?
4.
Did anyone instruct, request, suggest, or imply
that you should send yourself the aforementioned Inauguration Day email
memorializing President Obama’s meeting with Mr. Comey about the Trump/Russia
investigation? If so, who and why?
5.
Is the account of the January 5, 2017 meeting
presented in your email accurate? Did you omit any other portions of the conversation?
6.
Other than that email, did you document the
January 5, 2017 meeting in any way, such as contemporaneous notes or a formal
memo? To the best of your knowledge, did anyone else at that meeting take notes
or otherwise memorialize the meeting?
7.
During the meeting, did Mr. Comey or Ms. Yates
mention potential press coverage of the Steele dossier? If so, what did they
say?
8.
During the meeting, did Mr. Comey describe the
status of the FBI’s relationship with Mr. Steele, or the basis for that status?
9.
When and how did you first become aware of the
allegations made by Christopher Steele?
10.
When and how did you first become aware that the
Clinton Campaign and the Democratic National Committee funded Mr. Steele’s
efforts?
11.
You wrote that President Obama stressed that he
was “not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law
enforcement perspective.” Did President Obama ask about, initiate, or
instruct anything from any other perspective relating to the FBI’s
investigation?
12.
Did President Obama have any other meetings with
Mr. Comey, Ms. Yates, or other government officials about the FBI’s
investigation of allegations of collusion between Trump associates and Russia?
If so, when did these occur, who participated, and what was discussed?
Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.
Please contact Patrick Davis of Chairman Grassley’s staff at (202) 224-5225 or
Lee Holmes of Chairman Graham’s staff at (202) 224-5972 if you have any
questions.
Sincerely,
Charles E. Grassley Lindsey O. Graham
Chairman Chairman
Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and
Terrorism
Committee on the Judiciary
Enclosure: as stated.
cc: The Honorable Dianne Feinstein
Ranking Member
Committee on the Judiciary
The Honorable Sheldon Whitehouse
Ranking Member
Subcommittee on Crime and
Terrorism
Committee on the Judiciary
-30-
[1]
See Evan Perez, Jim Sciutto, Jake Tapper, Intel Chiefs Presented
Trump With Claims of Russian Efforts to Compromise Him, CNN (Jan. 12, 2017)
(the IC briefings of President Obama and then-President Elect Trump included the
Steele dossier); Josh Lederman, Biden: Intel Officials Told Us Trump
Allegations Might Leak, The
Associated Press (Jan. 12, 2017) (Vice President Biden told reporters:
“It surprised me in that it made it to the point where the agency, the FBI
thought they had to pursue it.”)
