No bias in Russia probe: Report

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Justice Department’s internal watchdog said it found numerous errors but no evidence of political bias by the FBI when it opened an investigation into contacts between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia in 2016.

The report by Inspector General Michael Horowitz gave ammunition to both Trump’s supporters and his Democratic critics in the debate about the legitimacy of an investigation that clouded the first two years of his presidency.

It will not be the last word on the subject.

Federal prosecutor John Durham, who is running a separate criminal investigation on the origins of the Russia probe, said he did not agree with some of the report’s conclusions.

Attorney General William Barr, who ordered the Durham investigation, said the report showed that the FBI launched its investigation “on the thinnest of suspicions.”

Horowitz found that the FBI had a legal “authorized purpose” to ask for court approval to begin surveillance of Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser.

But Horowitz also found a total of 17 “basic and fundamental” errors and omissions in the original application and renewals to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA), making the case appear stronger than it was.

In particular, the report singled out an FBI lawyer who altered an e-mail which claimed that Page was “not a source” to another U.S. government agency.

In truth, Page served from 2008 to 2013 as an “operational contact” to an agency not identified in the report.