Sen. Josh Hawley said top officials at the FBI essentially attempted to alter the outcome of the 2016 election when they misled a federal court in an attempt to obtain warrants to surveil President Trump’s campaign.
“Is it worse to have a foreign government trying to meddle in our elections, or is it worse to have our own government meddling in the election?” the Missouri Republican asked Wednesday during a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee. “[This report] shows that our government … effectively meddled in an ongoing presidential campaign.”
The hearing was called by Republicans to examine the Justice Department inspector general’s report on the origins of the Russia investigation.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz found more than a dozen examples of information top law enforcement officials failed to share or misrepresented with the court when seeking a warrant to investigate whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election. He also found, however, there was no political bias against Trump that motivated that effort.
Horowitz additionally determined that an FBI lawyer in charge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court application process improperly altered a document during the third and final warrant application renewal targeting a Trump campaign adviser to cover up that the bureau had erred in the previous filings.
The CIA, FBI, and National Security Council have all concluded that Russia waged a disinformation campaign on the internet to meddle in the 2016 election. Trump and some of his defenders in Congress have instead pointed to Ukraine, the country at the center of the impeachment effort, as being responsible for election interference based on debunked allegations that the nation hacked the Democratic National Committee.
Another complaint among Trump supporters is top FBI officials’ reliance on an unverified and salacious dossier of opposition research commissioned by Democrats to obtain the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants.
“The DNC pays for the Steele dossier, solicits the Steele dossier, and then gets the Federal Bureau of Investigation to go get FISA warrants, surveil an American citizen, surveil a presidential campaign, all on the basis of this manufactured garbage that they paid for,” Hawley said. “I mean, that’s extraordinary. That has got to be a first time in history. In fact, let me just ask you, Mr. Horowitz, are you aware of ever of another presidential campaign being targeted by the FBI during the campaign like the Trump one was?”
Horowitz testified that to his knowledge, the 2016 election was the first in American history in which a presidential campaign had been surveilled by federal law enforcement.
Former FBI Director James Comey said this week Horowitz’s report “vindicated” him.
“I don’t know that this report vindicated anyone who touched this,” Horowitz testified Wednesday.
Attorney General William Barr has separately appointed federal prosecutor John Durham to investigate the Russia investigation origins and whether any laws were broken in the FISA court process.
