A top Republican senator pushed the Justice Department’s watchdog Wednesday on whether the Trump-Russia investigation should’ve been shut down much sooner than it was.
Sen. Ron Johnson, the chairman of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, asked DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz to answer questions not specifically answered in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act report he released last week detailing missteps in the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation and flaws in the FISA process during its pursuit of surveillance warrants against former Trump campaign associate Carter Page.
The Wisconsin senator said “much attention” has been paid to Horowitz’s conclusions about the FBI’s “adequately predicated” July 2016 launch of the Crossfire Hurricane counterintelligence investigation and the “inaccuracies and omissions” in the bureau’s FISA filings and that yesterday’s surprise order by the presiding judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court “is a dramatic rebuke and underscores how serious the FISA warrant abuses are.”
But
, he said
, bigger questions remain.
“We should be asking a more fundamental question: At what point should the investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign have been shut down?” Johnson asked in his opening statement.
“I strongly believe Crossfire Hurricane should have been shut down within the first few months of 2017,” Johnson said. “Had the public known what the FBI knew at that time, it’s hard to imagine public support for continuing the investigation, much less the appointment of a special counsel four months later.”
When Johnson asked Horowitz if it would’ve been a “reasonable discretionary decision to shut this thing down,” Horowitz seemed to agree.
“Certainly, as someone who has done these cases as an [Assistant U.S. Attorney] and working with agents, if you’re getting information that isn’t advancing, and, in fact, is potentially undercutting or simply undercutting your primary theme or theory, as was happening here with the Carter Page FISA — if you look at the Carter Page file and say, ‘Should I keep going on this Carter Page related matter?’”
Horowitz concluded the FBI’s investigation was filled with serious missteps and concealed exculpatory information from the FISA court. The watchdog lambasted the DOJ and the FBI for 17 “significant errors and omissions” related to secret surveillance court filings targeting Page, which relied on allegations in British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s salacious and unverified dossier. Steele was working for the opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which had been hired by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
The inspector general didn’t rule out bias tainting the investigation, saying he couldn’t determine whether the missteps were due to “sheer gross incompetence” or just “intentional misconduct.”
Horowitz drew a distinction between the investigation’s launch and the subsequent troublesome steps taken during it, concluding the Trump-Russia investigation was opened on a sound legal footing. He was also unable to find direct evidence that political bias or tainted motivations influenced its genesis.
Johnson said the FBI’s investigations into Russian hacking, former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, and former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen “should have continued using normal FBI and DOJ procedures” but that “with a sufficiently informed public, and an FBI and DOJ that rigorously followed their own procedures, this national political nightmare could have been avoided.”
The senator pointed out the FBI’s confidential human sources who recorded Trump campaign officials within the first month and a half of the FBI’s investigation did not collect any information that supported the Steele dossier’s allegations.
“But rather than shut it down or use the ‘least intrusive’ methods, the FBI ramped it up,” Johnson said.
Johnson pointed to confidential human source methods turning into highly intrusive secretive electronic surveillance warrants and noted that FBI officials such as former FBI Director James Comey and FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe pushed to include the Steele dossier in the January 2017 intelligence community assessment on Russian election interference.
“And, finally, the FBI investigation ballooned into a special counsel investigation,” Johnson said. “As a result, the Trump administration was tormented for over two years by an aggressive investigation and media speculation — all based on a false narrative — and our nation has become even more divided.”
Johnson also said questions remained about the roles in the genesis of the launch of the Trump-Russia inquiry played by Maltese academic Joseph Mifsud, Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, suspected FBI informant Stefan Halper, and the mysterious Azra Turk, an alleged compatriot of Halper’s and a likely government informant, all of whom spoke with Trump campaign associate George Papadopoulos.
“The fact that the involvement of others outside the FBI and Justice Department remains murky and unknown after an 18-month inspector general investigation is not criticism of his work but speaks to the statutory limitations of inspectors general that should be evaluated and reassessed for reform,” Johnson said.
Johnson also asked two other key questions: “Why wasn’t the public properly informed?” and “Who will be held accountable?”
