Thread by @LindseyGrahamSC

First, I believe that it should be practice for all public officials who are contacted by a foreign government with an offer of assistance to their campaign – either directly or indirectly – to inform the FBI and reject the offer.

I made this point to FBI Director Wray during his confirmation hearings.

bit.ly/31s3AYG

But this has not been recent practice and we saw that come to a head during the 2016 presidential campaign.

During that race, we had a major American political party hire a foreign national, Christopher Steele, to dig up dirt on an American presidential candidate.

As if that was not bad enough, the foreign national compiled an unverified dossier that was then used by the FBI to obtain a warrant against an American citizen and surveil an American presidential campaign.

It has also come to light that the foreign national had a well-known political bias, was doing everything in his power to harm an American candidate’s electoral chances, and sought to directly influence who the American people elected as their next president.

American electoral campaigns should be run by, for, and decided by the American people.

Foreign influence in our electoral process is and has been a problem.

One of the corrective actions that I am pursuing is to ensure that foreign political operatives cannot be allowed to manipulate the American political system.

Changes of this nature will serve our democracy well.

Finally, the outrage some of my Democratic colleagues are raising about President Trump’s comments will hopefully be met with equal outrage that their own party hired a foreign national to do opposition research on President Trump’s campaign.............

...........and that information, unverified, was apparently used by the FBI to obtain a warrant against an American citizen.