IG testifies to FBI flaws in findings
Horowitz caught in political crossfire at Senate panel hearing
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department’s internal watchdog was caught in a political tug of war Wednesday as Republican and Democratic senators used his report on the origins of the Russia investigation involving Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign to support their views that it was a legitimate probe or a badly bungled farce.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about his findings that while the FBI had a legitimate basis to launch the investigation and was not motivated by political bias in doing so, there were flaws in how that investigation was conducted.
The hearing was the latest reflection of Washington’s politicization. Senators from both parties praised a detailed, nuanced report by a widely respected, nonpartisan investigator, while pressing him to call attention to findings that back their positions.
Horowitz himself tried to strike a balance.
He insisted that the FBI should not feel comforted by his findings and pointed out the absence of evidence for some of the most sensational claims by Trump and his supporters: that the investigation into ties between his presidential campaign and Russia had been opened for political reasons, that agents had infiltrated his election bid or that former President Barack Obama had directed a wiretap of the Republican candidate.
Still, his opening statement was critical of the investigation, and he returned time and again throughout the hearing to serious problems that he said underscored the need for policy changes at the FBI.
Among them, he said, were flaws and omissions in how the FBI prepared its applications for court approval to eavesdrop on a former Trump campaign aide, as he rebuked officials for failing to update judges as they learned new information that undercut some of their original assertions.
“It doesn’t vindicate anybody at the FBI who touched (the applications), including leadership,” Horowitz said. That was a rejection of the views of former FBI Director James Comey, who had claimed vindication for the bureau based on Horowitz’s conclusions.
Republicans and Democrats pressed Horowitz on whether he believed the FBI had acted with partisan bias. His response was hedged: He said the multitude of errors during the surveillance warrant process, which included the altering of an email by an FBI lawyer, was so “inexplicable” and yielded no obvious explanations that he could not be confident about the intention.
Even so, Horowitz also repeatedly noted under questioning from Democrats
that he had not found that the FBI had targeted Trump for investigation for political reasons. The investigation was opened for a proper cause, he said, after the FBI received information that a Trump campaign aide had been told that Russia had information that could hurt the presidential campaign of Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.
“It finds that it was a properly predicated investigation based on the rules of the FBI,” Horowitz said of his report.
Trump and his supporters are counting on different conclusions from a separate investigation led by John Durham, a prosecutor selected by Attorney General William Barr to investigate the early days of the Russia investigation. Durham issued a statement disputing some of Horowitz’s conclusions. But Horowitz said they had a relatively technical disagreement — that the evidence was sufficient to open a preliminary investigation but not a full one. The latter gives the FBI more intrusive tools for an investigation.
Horowitz’s report identified significant problems with applications to receive and renew warrants to eavesdrop on former Trump campaign aide Carter Page in 2016 and 2017. Investigators were concerned about Page’s ties to Russia, but never accused him of wrongdoing.
Horowitz told senators that the FBI failed to follow its own standards for accuracy and completeness when it sought a warrant from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor Page’s communications.
“We are deeply concerned that so many basic and fundamental errors were made by three separate, hand-picked investigative teams, on one of the most sensitive FBI investigations, after the matter had been briefed to the highest levels within the FBI,” Horowitz said.
The report detailed 17 errors and omissions during those wiretap applications, including failing to tell the court when questions were raised about the reliability of some of the information that it had presented to receive the warrants.
Those problems were especially alarming because the warrant to monitor Page “related so closely to an ongoing presidential campaign” and “even though those involved with the investigation knew that their actions were likely to be subjected to close scrutiny.”
Horowitz’s findings that the FBI was justified in launching the investigation has been criticized by Barr, a Trump defender. On Tuesday, Barr said the Russia investigation was based on a “bogus narrative,” and he declined to rule out that agents may have acted in bad faith.
Horowitz said that he has spoken with Barr about his findings and that the attorney general did not present anything that changed his conclusions. “He is free to have his opinion. We have our finding,” Horowitz said.