The Justice Department watchdog cast a wide net in condemning the FBI’s handling of a highly sensitive investigation into President Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz, in his first public remarks since releasing a report on his assessment of the Russia investigation, took aim at top officials in the bureau who oversaw a flawed effort to obtain the authority to electronically monitor Carter Page, an American foreign policy adviser who helped Trump’s election effort and was suspected of being a Russian asset.
“We are deeply concerned that so many basic and fundamental errors were made by three separate, hand-picked investigative teams; on one of the most sensitive FBI investigations; after the matter had been briefed to the highest levels within the FBI; even though the information sought through use of FISA authority related so closely to an ongoing presidential campaign; and even though those involved with the investigation knew that their actions were likely to be subjected to close scrutiny,” Horowitz said in his opening written testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee for its hearing Wednesday.
“We believe this circumstance reflects a failure not just by those who prepared the FISA applications, but also by the managers and supervisors in the Crossfire Hurricane chain of command, including FBI senior officials who were briefed as the investigation progressed,” Horowitz testified. “Especially in the FBl’s most sensitive and high-priority matters, and especially when seeking court permission to use an intrusive tool such as a FISA order, it is incumbent upon the entire chain of command, including senior officials, to take the necessary steps to ensure that they are sufficiently familiar with the facts and circumstances supporting and potentially undermining a FISA application in order to provide effective oversight consistent with their level of supervisory responsibility.”
Horowitz’s report was released on Monday, as Democrats in the House ramped up their impeachment effort against Trump. The Judiciary Committee is set to debate articles of impeachment Wednesday evening.
The inspector general determined that the initiation of the Trump-Russia investigation in July 2016 crossed the low threshold to be properly predicated, although Attorney General William Barr has cautioned this assessment is not absolute and will be more fully addressed in U.S. Attorney John Durham’s inquiry into the Russia investigation.
The focus of Horowitz’s inquiry was examining allegations of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuses against onetime Trump campaign associate Carter Page related to the FBIâs reliance on a dossier compiled by British ex-spy Christopher Steele. Horowitz concluded that the FBIâs investigation was filled with serious missteps and the concealment of exculpatory information from the FISA court. The report said at least 17 “significant errors and omissions” were discovered in the Page FISA applications spanning from October 2016 to summer 2017.
[WATCH: DOJ inspector general testifies about report on Russia investigation origins]
The DOJ watchdog is known to have criminally referred only one FBI lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, who has since left the bureau, for altering an email that was used by officials as they prepared an application renewal to present before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
The initial October 2016 FISA application and January 2017 FISA renewal were both approved by then-FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and then-Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe and then-FBI General Counsel James Baker were also involved in the approval process. The April 2017 FISA renewal was approved by Comey and by Dana Boente, who currently serves in Bakerâs former role as the FBIâs top lawyer. The final June 2017 FISA renewal was approved by McCabe and former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
Upon the release of Horowitz’s report, Democrats declared that any claims by Trump’s allies of a conspiracy against his campaign were invalid. Key figures who were under scrutiny took a victory lap after being subject to relentless attacks.
âSo it was all lies. No treason. No spying on the campaign. No tapping Trump’s wires. It was just good people trying to protect America,” Comey said on Twitter.
But contrary to what Democrats stressed in a early 2018 rebuttal to a House Intelligence Committee memo from the Republican majority, Horowitz faulted top FBI brass for an over-reliance on Steele’s dossier containing unverified claims about Trump and his associates’ ties to Russia.
“We concluded that the Steele reporting played a central and essential role in the decision to seek a FISA order,” Horowitz told the Senate on Wednesday. “FBI leadership supported relying on Steele’s reporting to seek a FISA order targeting Page after being advised of, and giving consideration to, concerns expressed by a Department attorney that Steele may have been hired by someone associated with a rival candidate or campaign.”
“We found that members of the Crossfire Hurricane team failed to meet the basic obligation to ensure that the Carter Page FISA applications were scrupulously accurate,” Horowitz said. “We identified significant inaccuracies and omissions in each of the four applications: Seven in the first FISA application and a total of 17 by the final renewal application.”
Horowitz said that as a result of these flaws, key information was not shared with DOJ leadership and the FISA court. “The FISA applications made it appear as though the evidence supporting probable cause was stronger than was actually the case,” Horowitz said.
The errors in the FISA approval process included concealing exculpatory information obtained through confidential human sources which showed Trump campaign members and associates disputed many of Steele’s allegations and denied Steele’s claims of a grand conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russians. Horowitz also concluded the bureau withheld from the FISA court information they obtained which cast doubt on Steele’s credibility and on the credibility of his sources and most salacious claims.
During his nearly two-year investigation, Horowitz’s team conducted over 170 interviews involving more than 100 witnesses.
In his report, Horowitz did not establish that political bias resulted in any intentional misconduct by the FBI agents and supervisors involved in the FISA process, but he was not satisfied with many of the explanations for the problems he uncovered.
FBI agents were found to have substituted personal judgments in place of FBI guidelines and in lieu of the FISA court when dismissing the significance of new or important facts. The inspector general also said FBI officials did not follow many of the rules in the FISA process and, in some cases, did not have familiarity with them.
