President Trump tore into the 2016 investigation into his presidential campaign and allegations of Russian collusion following Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuse by the Justice Department and FBI.
Speaking with reporters at the White House on Monday, the president called the investigation a “disgrace” and an “overthrow of government.”
“It is incredible, far worse than I would’ve ever thought possible, and it’s an embarrassment to our country,” he said. “It’s dishonest. It’s everything that a lot of people thought it would be except far worse. So, I’m going to get some very detailed briefings, but it’s a very sad day when I see that, a very sad day when a lot of people see that.”
He continued, “It was concocted, and you say what you want. It was probably something that has never happened in the history of our country.”
Counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway also weighed in on the findings, saying, “You can’t blame people for feeling that it was unfair and that the fix was in. And to think that, perhaps, people lied and spied and tried to subvert democracy just because they wanted someone else to win or just because they have a different political point of view, that is not the way the world’s greatest democracy has been formed and can survive and at a time such as this.”
She continued, “I will just repeat something that Attorney General Barr said today, Mr. President, that this was an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions, and that is chilling language for any of us who want our government to work for us and not against us. I only wish they had come and informed us, and we would’ve had the knowledge and the wherewithal to act at that time and not put the taxpayers through two-plus years of nonsense.”
“They fabricated evidence, and they lied to the courts, and they did all sorts of things to have it go their way, and this was something that we can never allow to happen again,” Trump said. “The report when you’re looking at it and the details of the report are far worse than anything I would’ve imagined … This was an overthrow of government, an attempted overthrow, and a lot of people were in on it, and they got caught. They got caught red-handed, and I look forward to the Durham report, which is coming out in the not-too-distant future.”
[Read: FISA abuse report by DOJ inspector general is released]
Horowitz’s highly-anticipated report found no political bias against the president by top DOJ and FBI officials. It did, however, find 17 instances in which officials made “significant errors or omissions” in the FISA applications to surveil one-time Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
After the report’s release, U.S. Attorney John Durham, who is conducting a separate investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation, disagreed with the inspector general’s determination that the opening of the Trump-Russia investigation was justified.
