GOP pushes Russia probe subpoenas

The US Senate Judiciary Committee is accelerating its investigation of the Justice Department’s Russia probe, voting to allow dozens of subpoenas over Democratic objections that the move was an effort to help President Donald Trump’s re-election.

The committee rarely pushes subpoenas without bipartisan support, and hasn’t done so in more than a decade. Democrats opposed the move and saying it could affect relations on the panel for years to come.

“You are trying to stop me from doing something I think the country needs to do, and I’m not going to be stopped,” Senator Lindsey Graham, committee chairman and a close ally of the president, said.

The vote empowers Graham to issue more than 50 subpoenas to current and former Justice Department officials. Graham said the panel would be looking at how the department went “so off the rails” as it investigated Trump and his campaign. Republicans have turned their attention to a report by the Justice Department’s inspector general last year that found errors and omissions in the applications the FBI submitted to conduct surveillance on a former Trump campaign aide. Trump has repeatedly said he believes the department was conspiring against him.

Democrats have argued that the errors in the surveillance do not invalidate the investigation, which ultimately found Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election on behalf of Trump but found insufficient evidence to establish a criminal conspiracy with Trump’s campaign. The internal Justice Department report said the FBI was justified in opening the investigation and found no evidence that it acted with political bias.

Democrats said the subpoenas won’t affect any real change, but are simply an attempt to discredit the findings of the investigation.