‘Investigate the investigators!’ Republicans go on offense targeting Jim Comey, Loretta Lynch, James Clapper and other Russiagate names as White House turns aggressive and Lindsey Graham vows to ‘get answers’

• Senior White House aide says it’s fair to ‘investigate the investigators’ when something as broad as the Mueller russia probe ‘falls apart’
• Republicans are going on offense, vowing to get to the bottom of the spread of a narrative that the special counsel debunked
• They say Democrats, including some in former president Obama’s orbit, weaponized the idea of Russia collusion and should be held accountable
• Sen. Lindsey Graham vowed to use the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate, and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani predicted names would emerge
•  Vice President Mike Pence hinted at anger over ‘reckless accusations by many Democrats and members of the media’
• Boston Herald editorial summed up the mood in Washington
• ‘History will outlive the activists on CNN and it is our responsibility to shed light on the motives behind the machinations to undermine a duly elected president’ 

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As the dust settled Monday on the Mueller probe’s final curtain-closing, Republicans in Washington swung from defense to offense, calling for new deep-dives into a cast of characters who started and fueled the lengthy Russia-conspiracy chase.  

A day after Special Counsel Robert Mueller exonerated President Trump from claims that he colluded with Russia to win his election, his spokespersons, lawyers and partisan advocates blanketed the airwaves and the Internet with demands for Obama administration officials and Justice Department insiders to face their own scrutiny.

‘If we’re all serious about getting to the truth and not just scoring political points,’ a senior White House official told DailyMail.com on Monday, ‘you really have to be willing to investigate the investigators after something this far-reaching falls apart.’

Senior Trump aides Kellyanne Conway and Sarah Sanders blanketed the airwaves Monday morning with similar recommendations. Conway called for Democratic House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff to resign. 

But James Comey, James Clapper, John Brennan, Loretta Lynch, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page and other current and former government officials went from heroes to potential villains in the blink of a political news cycle when South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham spoke to the press.

President Donald Trump’s White House swung into offense mode on Monday after Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded there was no campaign collusion with Russians; a senior official said that ‘if we’re all serious about getting to the truth and not just scoring political points, you really have to be willing to investigate the investigators’

South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham told reporters that he will use her position as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee to probe who was responsible for advancing the Trump-Russia narrative

Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch (left), former FBI Director James Comey (center) and former CIA Director John Brennan (right) are all under new scrutiny after the collapse of the Democrat-favored narrative that President Donald Trump colluded with Russians to swing the 2016 election

Graham vowed in a press conference that he would use his chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee to peel apart the layers of the 22-month Mueller probe and what preceded it.

That, he said, includes the uncorroborated, Democrat-funded dossier of anti-Trump research that led the Justice Department to dig into alleged Trump-Russia ties, and the DOJ’s use of its contents to get a surveillance warrant on Trump a campaign adviser.

‘The FISA warrant issued against Carter Page based on a dossier prepared by Christopher Steele is at a minimum disturbing,’ said Graham, a staunch Trump ally. ‘Whether or not it’s illegal, I don’t yet know, so I’m going to get answers to this.’

‘If no one else cares, it seems to me Republicans do, and that’s sad … “f the shoe were on the other foot it would be front page news all over the world,’ he said.

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Graham also vowed to dig into an infamous June 2016 airport tarmac meeting between former President Bill Clinton and Lynch, then President Barack Obama’s attorney general.

Clinton and Lynch have both denied discussing the counterintelligence investigation that targeted Hillary Clinton at the time. But then-FBI Director Comey announced just a week later that he had refused to recommend criminally prosecuting Mrs. Clinton for mishandling classified information on her private email server.

The mood in Washington was summed up Monday by an editorial written 430 miles away and published in the Boston Herald.

‘The Mueller report is in. The president is vindicated. Now it is time to investigate the investigators,’ the editorial read.

‘Democrats and the media will show little interest in such an investigation but that is of no matter. History will outlive the activists on CNN and it is our responsibility to shed light on the motives behind the machinations to undermine a duly elected president.’

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Trump backer whose daughter is the president’s White House press secretary, laid out a theory that could dominate headlines for months.

‘There WAS a CONSPIRACY, a COVER-UP, and attempted COUP,’ he tweeted.

‘It was done by Comey, McCabe, Ohr, Clapper, Brennan, Rice, Strzok, Page, Yates, et al. None of those ppl are in @realDonaldTrump world. Not ONE. Hold them accountable for abuse of power. No one should be above the law.’

Rudy Giuliani, the personal attorney to Donald Trump, said Monday that he wants to know who was responsible for funding and fueling a conspiracy theory about the president colluding with Russians to swing the 2016 election

Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani demanded on ‘Fox & Friends’ to know exactly who was responsible for promoting the ‘cockamamie’ theory that the president conspired with Russians to steal the 2016 election and then tried to obstruct a federal investigation into his actions.

‘If there was no evidence of collusion – three investigations, no evidence of collusion – who made it up? It had to come from somewhere. It just didn’t come out of thin air,’ Giuliani fumed.

‘I want to know who did it, who paid for it, who fueled it. Because the person who did it, and the group that did it, knows it’s untrue – because they invented it.’

Giuliani said the president’s adversaries, the same group that applied pressure inside the Justice Department, will soon have a reckoning.

In an editorial Monday, The Wall Street Journal concluded that ‘someone may have conned the FBI into one of the great dirty tricks in American political history.’

‘Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!’ Giuliani responded to a live reading of that line. ‘And you’re going to find out, believe me, who it was.’

It’s Graham who may be best positioned to break Washington’s inertia and launch an investigation designed as a counterweight to House Democrats’ efforts to keep the themes of Mueller’s probe alive.

Mueller investigation by the numbers 

Employed 19 lawyers 

Worked with team of 40 FBI agents, intelligence analysts, forensic accountants, and other professional staff

Issued more than 2,800 subpoenas

Executed nearly 500 search warrants

Obtained more than 230 orders for communication records

Issued almost 50 orders authorizing use of pen registers

Made 13 requests to foreign governments for evidence

Interviewed approximately 500 witnesses 

Anti-Trump collusion among Justice Department insiders the president inherited in 2017 has ‘pretty much been swept under the rug except by a few Republicans,’ Graham said. ‘Those days are over.’

‘What role did the dossier play?’ he asked, saying he wants to know it if was ‘the primary source’ that launched the Justice Department’s Russia-related intelligence-gathering scramble.

‘I want to know the role Comey played in this,’ he declared.

Graham had sent a warning to the FBI chief who Trump fired in May 2017, after Comey tweeted a photo of himself looking up at a forest full of tall trees and captioned the picture: ‘So many questions.’

‘Could not agree more,’ Graham replied. ‘See you soon.’

‘I was sort of like, “What was the whole forest thing about?”‘ he said Monday.

In a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Council, Vice President Mike Pence stayed away from talk of recriminations in a more high-minded victory lap — but did throw a jab over ‘reckless accusations by many Democrats and members of the media.’

‘Make no mistake about it, my fellow Americans, this was a total vindication of the President of the United States and our campaign, and it should be welcomed by every American,’ he said.

READ IN FULL: Attorney General Barr’s letter to Congress summarizing the Mueller investigation findings

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