Report: Bias did not taint officials
Justice Department watchdog found politics did not sway those running FBI’s Russia coordination probe.
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department’s internal watchdog is expected to find in a forthcoming report that political bias did not taint top officials running the FBI investigation into possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign in 2016, while at the same time criticizing the bureau for systemic failures in its handling of surveillance applications, according to two U.S. officials.
The report due out Dec. 9 from Inspector General Michael Horowitz will allege that a low-level FBI lawyer inappropriately altered a document that was used as part of a controversial application for electronic surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser, the officials said. The inspector general referred that finding to U.S. Attorney John Durham, so that he may investigate it as a possible crime, they said.
But Horowitz will conclude that the application still had a proper legal and factual basis, according to the officials, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity.
In broad terms, the report rebuffs accusations of a political conspiracy by senior law enforcement officials against the Trump campaign to favor Democrat Hillary Clinton, while also knocking the bureau for procedural shortcomings, said the officials. On balance, they said, it provides a mixed assessment of the bureau and department’s undertaking of a probe that became highly politicized and divided the nation.
“You can see how the warring factions will seize on the various parts of this to advance their respective narratives,” said a person familiar with the inspector general investigation.
The Russia investigation turned up evidence that Moscow interfered in the 2016 election in “sweeping and systematic fashion.”
It was ultimately taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller, who racked up criminal charges against 34 people, including 26 Russian nationals, and secured guilty pleas from seven — including some of the highest-ranking officials in Trump’s campaign.
In the end, Mueller found insufficient evidence to conclude that Trump or any of his associates conspired with the Russians, though his report alleged the campaign was eager for such assistance and outlined episodes in which the president himself might have obstructed justice.
Horowitz’s several-hundred page report will land amid the frenzy of the impeachment inquiry, and Republicans, analysts say, likely will seek to use it to frame the Justice Department and FBI as tainted by political bias in 2016.
The inspector general began his work in March 2018, focusing on the application for a surveillance order on former Trump campaign foreign policy aide Carter Page. Horowitz wanted to determine whether the application and renewal requests complied with the law and FBI and Justice Department policies. Such requests are made through the department to a federal Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that meets in secret to vet such requests.
As part of his review, Horowitz also scrutinized material used in the application provided by a former British spy, Christopher Steele, an FBI informant who compiled a now-infamous series of memos that included sensational allegations of Trump hiring the services of call girls in Moscow.
Steele was hired by an opposition research firm working for Clinton’s campaign to investigate Trump, leading Republicans to accuse the FBI of bias for relying even if only in part on the “Steele Dossier” for its surveillance application on Page.
In May of 2018, after news reports that a retired American professor who was a longtime U.S. intelligence source had approached Page and another campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, to aid the Russia investigation, Trump demanded on Twitter that the Department of Justice “look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes.”
The department quickly announced that Horowitz’s investigation would expand to assess whether the FBI showed any political motivation in its counterintelligence probe of Trump associates suspected of involvement with Russian agents during the 2016 presidential election. That included a look at whether the FBI acted appropriately in opening an investigation, code-named Crossfire Hurricane, in late July that year of Papadopoulos and whether Russian agents were seeking to use him as a conduit to the Trump campaign.
“If anyone did infiltrate or surveil participants in a presidential campaign for inappropriate purposes, we need to know about it and take appropriate action,” then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said in a statement in May 2018.
The inspector general’s report, the officials said, is divided into three parts.
One focuses on the opening of the Crossfire Hurricane probe of Papadopoulos. Another reviews the surveillance order on Page. A third assesses the bureau’s handling of Steele and his information.