Sen. Chuck Grassley tells ‘Pod Force One’ that Russiagate, Biden scandals were a ‘coverup within government’ that dwarfed Watergate

WASHINGTON — Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is convinced that recent political scandals — from Russiagate to the Biden family’s influence peddling — are part of a massive “cover-up within government” that in time will be seen as worse than the Watergate scandal that took down Richard Nixon more than 50 years ago.

On the latest episode of “Pod Force One,” out now, Grassley told Post columnist Miranda Devine that “there’s a big difference” between Watergate and wrongdoing by the Obama and Biden administrations.

“I’ll probably be speaking — long speech on that — on the floor of the United States Senate,” said the 91-year-old chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

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“See, Watergate was kind of a cover-up from the outside. You and I have been talking during this podcast about a cover-up within government. There’s a big difference.”

Grassley pointed to hundreds of pages of intelligence, some of which was released last month by his office, showing efforts by Obama administration officials to build the narrative that Donald Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election — and thus was an illegitimate president.

“I remember a conversation I had with a friend of mine who had talked to a Democratic senator in February of 2017,” Grassley recounted. “He made this famous statement that I remember, that maybe only she and I shared, but he said that Trump would not be around past September of 2017.

“Now, that’s how blatant this attempt was to get Trump out of office.”

Many details of that attempt have only come out due to declassification of federal records by members of Trump’s current cabinet, including Attorney General Pam Bondi, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and FBI Director Kash Patel — frequently at Grassley’s insistence.

As a result, former CIA Director John Brennan, former DNI James Clapper and former FBI Director James Comey are facing a grand jury probe over potential criminal actions, some of which may have undermined the 45th president’s administration for years.

“Everything was thrown against Trump,” Grassley explained. “It was all made public at the time they were doing it. What we are learning now, is the scheming that went on to make the cases that Jack Smith brought against Trump — and those things are just the weaponization of the powers of government, particularly FBI and the Department of Justice.”

“It’s just the opposite in the case of the [Hillary] Clinton emails,” he went on. “It was using the power of government to cover up, with the idea that we got to get Clinton elected and we can’t let Trump get elected … they knew about things that should have been investigated, how she misused the email process on her own private server, and things of that nature, and they knew about it, and they didn’t do anything to follow through on any of it.”

“So what we have recently released is the information that proves that the FBI was not doing its job, and by not doing its job, it was covering up all the misdeeds of the Clinton emails,” he added.

Grassley discussed his and Sen. Ron Johnson’s (R-Wis.) investigative work on Hunter Biden’s lucrative foreign business ventures, many of which began during his father’s vice presidency.

“We had whistleblowers that came to us and told us how bad the situation was,” said Grassley, who was given what Devine called a “bogus briefing” by the FBI about the matter in August 2020.

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Full Episode

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“We go to this briefing, and we didn’t learn anything new at the briefing, but the briefing was set up at the behest of Democrat leaders in the House and Senate … to put us in line,” he recalled, “so that out of this meeting, they could leak a press release that would say that we didn’t know what we were doing.”

Asked by Devine whether any ex-officials will face jail time, Grassley responded: “Too early to tell. But I’ll tell you, what they did to keep Trump from getting elected president, and then — particularly after he was elected early on, before he’s even sworn in — did everything they could to get him out of, with the hope of getting him out of office, or if they didn’t get him out of office, ruining his first term.”

“And I think they accomplished that through that Russia, Russia, Russia stuff,” he also said. “I’m going to let the process play out. I’m not a judge and I’m not a jury.”

Grassley also told Devine that he sent nearly 160 letters to Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland — but never received substantial answers on his inquiries.

Trump’s team, by contrast, has provided “the most cooperation” of any presidential administration, “Republican or Democrat,” in his more than four decades in the Senate.

“I’m astounded with what we have been able to get out of this administration,” Grassley declared.

“My motive is to make sure that we have transparency of everything that was covered up in previous administrations, make it public. Government being more transparent brings accountability, and then in turn, discourage it from happening in the future.”