Former FBI Director James Comey condemned Attorney General William Barr for his harsh criticism of how the bureau handled an investigation into President Trump’s campaign.
After the release of the Justice Department inspector general report on alleged surveillance abuses against the Trump campaign, Barr said there’s “the possibility that there was bad faith.”
“He does not have a factual basis as the attorney general of the United States to be speculating that agents acted in bad faith,” Comey told Fox News Sunday. “The facts just aren’t there. Full stop. That doesn’t make it any less consequential, any less important, but that’s an irresponsible statement.”
Comey also slammed Trump for calling FBI officials “scum” who had “destroyed” people’s lives with the investigation, calling the president’s remark a “continuation of the lies about the FBI” while also admitting it’s “an outrage” that the subject of the FISA warrants, onetime Trump adviser Carter Page, was made public.
Barr said earlier this week that the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Trump’s campaign was conducted in an inappropriate manner based on the evidence the bureau had.
“The Inspector General’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken,” Barr said in a statement responding to Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz on Monday.
“It is also clear that, from its inception, the evidence produced by the investigation was consistently exculpatory,” Barr continued. “Nevertheless, the investigation and surveillance was pushed forward for the duration of the campaign and deep into President Trump’s administration.”
The inspector general, who was looking into allegations of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuse to monitor Trump campaign adviser Page, determined the bureau made “at least 17 significant errors or omissions” in the applications spanning from October 2016 to the summer of 2017. But he also concluded the counterintelligence investigation was properly authorized, and no political bias influenced the investigation.
