Attorney General William Barr confirmed on Wednesday that the Justice Department is looking into the investigators associated with the Trump-Russia inquiry carried out by the department and the FBI in 2016.
Following questioning by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Barr told the Senate Judiciary Committee, “I have people in the Department of Justice helping me review the activities of the summer of 2016.”
[Watch: Barr testifies about Mueller investigation before Senate Judiciary Committee]
Barr told the committee the Justice Department is investigating the genesis of the investigation into the Trump campaign, the role of the infamous Trump dossier, actions carried out by Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, and more.
Grassley asked Barr if he had “tasked any staff to look into whether spying by the FBI and other agencies on the Trump campaign was properly predicated.” Barr confirmed that he had a team looking into the matter.
Grassley also asked about “text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page that appear to show the FBI may have tried to use counter-intelligence briefings for the Trump transition team as intelligence gathering operations.” Barr assured Grassley that he was looking into this allegation and would brief the Senate on it when he had answers.
[Related: Lindsey Graham reads f-bomb text from Peter Strzok during Barr hearing]
Grassley then pressed Barr on the dossier compiled by British ex-spy Christopher Steele. Grassley said that “the Clinton campaign and the Democrat[ic] National Committee hired Fusion GPS to do opposition research against candidate Trump” and that Fusion GPS then hired Steele to compile his dossier. “That reportedly used Russian government sources for information,” Grassley said. “And the Steele dossier was central to the now debunked collusion narrative.”
The Steele dossier was used in Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act applications to obtain warrants to surveil former Trump campaign associate Carter Page. Some of its biggest claims, such as Trump lawyer Michael Cohen supposedly meeting in Prague with Russian operatives and foreign hackers, have been undercut.
“Here is the irony,” Grassley said. “The Mueller report spent millions investigating and found no collusion between Trump campaign and Russia. But the Democrats paid for a document created by a foreign national with reported foreign government sources. Not Trump, but the Democrats.”
He added: “That’s the definition of collusion.”
Grassley then said that “despite the central status of the Steele dossier to the collusion narrative, the Mueller report failed to analyze whether the dossier was filled with disinformation to mislead U.S. Intelligence agencies and the FBI” and asked whether Mueller had looked into “whether the Steele dossier was part of a Russian disinformation and interference campaign.”
Barr said he “had not yet had anyone go through the full scope of his investigation to determine whether he did address or look at all into those issues … I really couldn’t say what he actually looked into.”
But Barr assured Grassley that the Justice Department would be looking into it, saying that he was “assembling all the existing information out there about it,” drawing from investigations that had been done by congressional committees, the Justice Department’s inspector general, and the special counsel.
Grassley also pressed Barr on whether “the special counsel have looked into the origins of the FBI’s investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.”
Barr said he didn’t know if Mueller “viewed his charter that broadly” but said it was something he was reviewing himself, adding that he would “look at whatever the special counsel has developed on that.”
Barr told the Senate in April that he believed “spying did occur” and that he’d be opening a Justice Department investigation into “the genesis and conduct of intelligence activities directed at the Trump campaign during 2016.”
Beyond the investigation being conducted by Barr, the DOJ’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz has been conducting an investigation into alleged Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuse. It is expected to conclude as early as May or June.
