The Justice Department watchdog rejected former FBI Director James Comey’s assertion that his report on the bureau’s conduct during the Trump-Russia investigation vindicated him.
“The activities we found here don’t vindicate anybody who touched this,” Inspector General Michael Horowitz said Wednesday while testifying to the Senate Judiciary Committee on his report.
Comey wrote an opinion piece for the Washington Post after the release of the inspector general’s report, saying the FBI was “smeared” by Attorney General William Barr and President Trump’s allies.
“The FBI fulfilled its mission — protecting the American people and upholding the U.S. Constitution. Now those who attacked the FBI for two years should admit they were wrong,” Comey wrote.
Horowitz’s report, released Monday, found that the FBI’s decision to open an investigation into Trump campaign associates was not motivated by political bias. Still, Horowitz found “significant inaccuracies and omissions” in the FBI’s applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
In his opening written testimony, Horowitz condemned the FBI’s “entire chain of command” in their handling of the FISA process.
Barr, whom Democrats have accused of going out of his way to defend Trump and attack his political rivals, has been critical in his appraisal of the FBI’s actions.
“There were gross abuses of FISA and inexplicable behavior that is intolerable in the FBI,” Barr said Tuesday. “I think that leaves open the possibility that there was bad faith.”
[Barr: Comey refusal to reinstate security clearance a ‘problem’ in FISA investigation]
