The FBI sought a warrant to wiretap a U.S. citizen and, in effect, a U.S. presidential campaign, based on a shoddy Democrat-funded pile of conspiracy theories known as the Steele dossier. The dossier's allegations against then-candidate Donald Trump were based on "multiple layers of hearsay upon hearsay," and the document also took seriously comments made in jest.
In other words, the origins of the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign was exactly as partisan and shoddy as Republicans said it was, according to the information released by the Justice Department's inspector general. The inspector general released a report detailing a shocking account of rampant misconduct at the FBI. Agents there misled and lied to the FISA court to authorize and reauthorize their spying on Trump's 2016 campaign.
It doesn't matter what you think about Trump, the precedent these crooked agents set with their misconduct is horrifying.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz wrote in his report released this week that although there were a number of "errors and omissions" that occurred during the FBI's bizarre investigation, he found no evidence of "political bias" and that the investigation was otherwise legitimate and justified.
But "errors and omissions," a quote that was repeated over and over again in headlines, sounds like minor missteps that could have been taken care of with a little Wite-Out. It hardly covers the blatant wrongdoing that Horowitz described in his report — corrupt law enforcement officers abusing their power.
Both in his report and during congressional testimony on Wednesday, Horowitz admitted that he didn’t know why the FBI was so keen to spy on Trump campaign associate Carter Page, who was in fact not a Russian agent after all; that he didn’t know why they continued to spy on Page, even after the FBI was informed by the CIA that Page had actually been working for them as an informant; and that he didn’t know why, when the FBI continually sought to have its investigation reauthorized by the FISA court, it routinely withheld information from the court or straight-up misled about things that might have undermined the investigation.
In his report, Horowitz said he found seven times where FBI agents relied on “inaccurate, incomplete, or unsupported” information in order to continually seek reauthorization for the surveillance of Page and others in the campaign.
In one instance, Horowitz noted that the FBI’s original theory (since debunked) that Page was a Russian agent was complicated by his denials to intelligence sources about having met with a pair of Russian oligarchs, who the FBI believed had in fact been in touch with Page. When the FBI wanted reauthorization to continue spying on Page, it concealed Page’s denials from the court.
When relying on information provided by Christopher Steele, the former British spy and author of the Steele dossier, to seek surveillance reauthorization, the FBI told the FISA court that Steele’s reporting was “corroborated and used in criminal proceedings.” As Horowitz writes, this characterization was misleading. The FBI “overstated the significance of Steele’s past reporting,” and the intelligence provided by Steele had not even been approved for use in the reauthorization application by the agent who supervised him.
Horowitz also admitted in Wednesday's hearing that one lawyer with the FBI actually doctored an email to make it say something that it didn't say in real life.
There are sins of omission and sins of commission. The FBI didn't just fail to do right here. The agents involved in this investigation did evil. They used their power as law enforcement agents in pursuit of a perceived political enemy.
That's not an error. That's corruption. And it's frightening to think what they could do next because they could do it to anyone.
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