Former FBI Director James Comey declared that “the truth is finally out” after the release of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on allegations of surveillance abuses during the Trump-Russia investigation.
Comey, 58, wrote an opinion piece for the Washington Post after the Monday release of Horowitz’s much-anticipated report. In it, he said that Attorney General William Barr is due for a reckoning over what he called a practice of acting like a spokesman for President Trump.
“Well, the wait is over, and those who smeared the FBI are due for an accounting,” Comey said. “In particular, Attorney General William P. Barr owes the institution he leads, and the American people, an acknowledgment of the truth.
“Unfortunately, it appears that Barr will continue his practice of deriding the Justice Department when the facts don’t agree with Trump’s fiction,” he continued. “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 added that Barr diminished the Justice Department by claiming that the FBI was “spying” on Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
“The current attorney general even slimed his own organization by supporting Trump’s claims, asserting there had been ‘spying’ on the campaign. Crimes had been committed, the Trump crowd said, and a whole bunch of former FBI leaders, including me, were likely going to jail,” Comey wrote.
In his 476-page report, Horowitz found the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Trump’s team was properly authorized and that no political bias influenced the investigation. Horowitz was investigating whether there was Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuse in monitoring former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
Despite finding that the investigation was justified, Horowitz also found that the bureau made “at least 17 significant errors or omissions” in the applications spanning from October 2016 to the summer of 2017. Comey called those “unfortunate” and chalked them up to human error.
“Human beings make mistakes,” Comey wrote. “Horowitz also concluded that a low-level FBI lawyer doctored an email as part of the administrative process leading to the renewal of the application for electronic surveillance of the former campaign adviser. Although it is not clear what difference that made, it is still potentially serious wrongdoing and does not reflect the FBI culture of compliance and candor.”
Barr said Monday that the counterintelligence investigation into President Trump’s campaign was conducted in an inappropriate manner. He contended that the FBI had “insufficient” evidence to launch the Trump-Russia investigation.
“While most of the misconduct identified by the Inspector General was committed in 2016 and 2017 by a small group of now-former FBI officials, the malfeasance and misfeasance detailed in the Inspector General’s report reflects a clear abuse of the FISA process,” Barr said.
“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,” he added.
