US government spied on Trump election campaign, law chief says

DONALD TRUMP’S 2016 election campaign was spied on by the US government, the country’s attorney general said yesterday, as he vowed to investigate whether rules were broken.

William Barr, who became attorney general in February, said he would look at how the FBI and US intelligence agencies set up the Trump-russia probe before the presidential election.

“Spying did occur,” Mr Barr said during a hearing on Capitol Hill, noting at another point that “spying on a political campaign is a big deal”.

He appeared to draw parallels with government spying on the anti-vietnam War movement in the Sixties, while insisting that he did not know if any wrongdoing had occurred.

The comments follow intense pressure from the president to investigate the origins of the Russia investigation after a report by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, found no conspiracy or collusion between Mr Trump’s campaign and the Kremlin.

It was unclear what “spying” Mr Barr was referring to, but Mr Trump’s allies have pointed to a string of actions taken by intelligence and justice officials before the election, as they claim

‘I think spying did occur ... the question is whether it was adequately predicated. I would need to explore that’

the “deep state” was unfairly targeting the Trump campaign.

One was the wiretap on Carter Page, the former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, that was applied for and approved before the 2016 election. Republicans have questioned how open US officials were with the court.

Another is the handling of a string of allegations made in a series of memos by Christopher Steele, the British former MI6 agent, about the Trump campaign’s links to Russia.

A third involved Stefan Halper, the Cambridge University academic and former Republican adviser. US media reported that he approached Trump campaign officials on behalf of the FBI to sound them out over Russia before the election – though that has not been confirmed by the US government.

At a hearing of the senate appropriations committee, Mr Barr said: “I think spying did occur ... the question is whether it was adequately predicated ... I would need to explore that.”

Mr Barr referenced rules that curb the government’s ability to spy, saying: “I’m not suggesting that those rules were violated but I think it’s important to look at that.” He said that he would look into whether the FBI and US intelligence agencies acted appropriately.

Trump acolytes have framed Mr Mueller’s investigation as a witch hunt. Supporters of the probe insist that officials were acting in the public interest.