Releasing his 444-page report on the FBI’s handling to the Trump counterintelligence investigation, 56-year-old Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz found no conspiracy or political bias in the FBI. Horowitz, of course, knows about the email and text message exchange in 2016-2017 between former FBI Agent Peter Strzok and his girlfriend, former FBI Attorney Lisa Page, both of whom swore they’d do everything possible to stop 73-year-old President Donald Trump from becoming president. Strzok and Page have sworn they did nothing to bias Trump only expressed personal opinions during the 2016 presidential campaign. In denying that the FBI held any bias toward Trump, Horowitz accepted Strzok and Page’s explanation, rather than digging a little deeper. Horowitz said the FBI had sufficient probable cause to investigate the Trump campaign.
While Horowitz delivered his findings, 69-year-old Attorney General William Barr ordered a separate investigation by 69-year-old U.S. Atty. John Durham (R-Conn.), looking into the FBI’s “probable cause” to seek Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Act [FISA] warrants to wiretap Trump campaign officials. Barr doesn’t seem satisfied with Horowitz’s findings that he saw nothing wrong with former FBI Director James Comey using former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s paid opposition research by Glen Simpson’s FusionGPS, using former MI5 agent Christopher Steele’s “dossier.” Barr thinks that if the FISA judges knew they issued a warrant based on an unreliable political document, they wouldn’t’ have issued the warrant. Barr wants Durham to go deeper that Horowitz who apparently relied on statements from current and former FBI officials.
President Trump called Horowitz’s report “far worse than I ever though possible,” calling the FBI’s actions a “disgrace.” Horowitz found 17 “significant inaccuracies and omissions,” in obtaining FISA warrants on former Trump campaign aid Carter Page. Page was never charged with anything, despite the FBI telling the FISA court they had sufficient probable cause to investigate his ties to Russia. Horowitz found “fundamental errors” in the FBI’s FISA application process, finding serious problems with the “FBI’s chain of command’s management and supervision of the FISA process,” yet stopping short of uncovering political bias at upper echelons of the FBI. Trump said that the FBI, under Comey, “fabricated evidence and they lied to the courts,” something Horowitz would not say and did not find. Barr goes further than Horowitz in leveling charges against former FBI officials.
In letting Durham reach his own conclusion, Barr wants to find out who authorized the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation against Trump and his campaign. “The Inspector General’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken,” Barr said. Leaving it in Durham’s hands, Barr wants to know the specific “probable cause” used by Comey to justify wiretapping Carter Page’s phones. “The findings of this IG report decimate the claims that the Trump campaign was illegally spied or surveilled, that political advisers were entrapped, that the bias or political motive was in any way a factor,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). Blumenthal, a strong backer of Trump’s impeachment, looks for anything to find Trump guilty of high-crimes-and-misdemeanors.
Unliked Horowitz, Durham’s report will focus on the “prediction,” the FBI’s term for “probable cause.” Durham’s wants to know the origins of the FBI’s counterintelligence information into Trump and his campaign. ”Based on the evidence collected to date, and while our investigations is ongoing, last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to prediction and how the FBI case was opened,” Durham said. Durham’s wants to know the chain of command, including former President Barack Obama and former Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch, authorizing the FBI to investigate the Trump campaign. Durham does not believe the FBI’s “prediction” or “probable cause” was anything more that the dubious Steele dossier. Comey claimed he had other probable cause for his counterintelligence investigation but never disclosed it.
FBI Director Christopher Wray said the department “embraces” all of IG Horowitz’s findings and will take corrective action beyond recommendations by the IG report. Speaking today, Wray said if anything illegal or inappropriate happened at the FBI, including doctoring emails, he’ll take corrective action. “The FBI will take appropriate disciplinary action where warranted. Notably, many of the employees described in the report are no longer employed at the FBI,” Wray said. Democrats, like Blumenthal, don’t want the IG’s report to derail the impeachment proceedings against Trump. Whatever Wray agreed to, he didn’t commit to notifying the DOJ if the FBI undertakes a counterintelligence investigation on any government official or private citizen. Horowitz found enough wrong with Comey’s FBI to urge the department to implement immediate corrective action.
