Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham opened up Wednesday morning’s hearing with Inspector General Michael Horowitz by falsely claiming the FBI was able to stop Russia’s attacks against the Hillary Clinton campaign, and suggested it did so early on, well before the November 2016 election.

That’s blatantly false.

Chairman Graham also appeared to imply that the FBI did so merely by contacting the Clinton campaign to warn them of Russia’s actions – and he made that claim to support his false theory that the Bureau should have told the Trump campaign it and its officials were subjects or even targets of a counterintelligence investigation to determine if they were conspiring with Russia to win the election.

“I want the American people to know there was an effort to affect Hillary Clinton’s campaign by foreign actors,” Graham says, not even mentioning Russia. “The FBI picked up that effort, they briefed her about it, and they were able to stop it.”

The FBI has not been able to stop Russian interference and attacks on the U.S. elections, which began according to the consensus of all 17 U.S. Intelligence agencies in 2013, and has to this day have not ended.

Watch:

Former chief DOJ spokesperson Matthew Miller offers this insight:

Former chief DOJ spokesperson Matthew Miller offers this insight: