by CHQ Staff

Senator Charles Grassley, Chairman of the Senate’s Committee on the Judiciary, claims that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice are actively obstructing his investigation of Obama-era abuses of power.

Grassley has demanded that the House Intelligence Committee release its report, which he says the Senate cannot review pre-release, and also the underlying FBI and DOJ documents, with necessary redactions to protect national security.

The Federalist’s Sean Davis reports Grassley is outraged that the FBI is using false classification assertions to prevent his office from releasing certain pertinent information to the public, including one piece of information which the FBI says the Senate cannot release that the Deputy Attorney General himself repeatedly shared with Senator Grassley “in unsecure space and on an unsecure phone line.”

Davis tweeted:

Grassley just leveled both barrels at the dossier operation: “Steele, who was working for Fusion GPS, who was working for the DNC and the Clinton campaign, was working with the Russians. So, who was actually colluding with Russians? It’s becoming more clear.”

In the meantime, the Democrats are not letting House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes dominate the narrative on the bombshell revelations contained in a soon-to-be declassified memo.

The Hill’s Josh Delk reports that Rep. Adam “Shifty” Schiff, the intelligence panel’s ranking member, said Democrats had to draft their own memo “setting out the relevant facts and exposing the misleading character of the Republicans’ document” and to clear the air.

Schiff said he and his Democratic colleagues on Monday “will move that this new memorandum be made available to the full House in our classified spaces.”

He called the Republican memo “another effort to distract from the Russia probe and undermine the special counsel.”

Over 200 Republicans have read the Nunes memo, so it will be interesting to see if Democrats flock to read the Democratic memo, given that only a dozen of them have bothered to read the memo approved by Chairman Nunes.

The Des Moines Register reports Chairman Grassley said Friday that he had referred former British spy Christopher Steele to the Justice Department for investigation about false statements he may have made to the government.

In a cover letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray released by the committee, said the referral relates to “certain communications between Christopher Steele and multiple U.S. news outlets regarding the so-called ‘Trump dossier.'” The rest of the referral is classified and was not released.

The cover letter does not say whom the senators believe Steele lied to, but Grassley said in a statement about the referral that “everyone needs to follow the law and be truthful in their interactions with the FBI.”

A release from the committee said that the referral, which is based on both classified and publicly available information unearthed by investigators, does not pertain to the veracity of claims in the dossier.

“The referral is for further investigation only, and is not intended to be an allegation of a crime,” the committee’s release said.

So, what does Chairman Grassley’s blast aimed at the FBI and DOJ signal?

If we were betting men, we’d bet that it signals Grassley has uncovered evidence that the FBI and DOJ are neck deep in the peddling of the phony Trump dossier and he’s not happy that the criminals at the Justice Department are now investigating themselves.