The FBI inspector general released his report (aka “the Horowitz report”) on Monday, and after examining more than a million documents and 100 witnesses, concluded the FBI made some mistakes in conducting its investigation of the 2016 Trump campaign’s interactions with Russian agents, but found no evidence of political bias.
“We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions” to open investigations of four Trump campaign aides, the report says.
The results undoubtedly are deeply disappointing to Republican partisans, who have argued the FBI’s investigation of Trump’s campaign was a partisan “witch hunt.”
Trump himself reacted by concocting a super-sized whopper about what the report says. He called its findings “far worse than anything I would have even imagined” and claimed, “This was an overthrow of government. This was an attempted overthrow, and a lot of people were in on it, and they got caught. They got caught red-handed.”
There is no evidence of that, but the fact Trump said it makes it likely his followers will believe it. Meanwhile, Fox News’ coverage is focusing on the FBI’s errors, which involve how the FBI handled a FISA warrant request.
Read NBC’s coverage of the story here.
The FBI used the laws as it would have against socialist or communist organizations. Democrats properly have been uneasy about the FBI whose origins are in the red scare and prohibition under J Edgar Hoover. Times have changed and the left loves the FBI.
If members of the FBI lied to a FISA judge that is damning on its face. It should be chilling to progressives and Democrats, unless of course the FBI is your big red dog….good doggie.
These laws did not stem from the “red scare” era, they were enacted after the 2001 terrorist attacks. The FBI sought the FISA warrants in question to investigate the Russians, not the Trump campaign. The Trump campaign staffers got caught up in it because they were talking to the Russians. But let’s be clear that the Russians, not American citizens, were the targets of the FBI surveillance. And they (i.e., the Russians) should have been investigated, because they were interfering in our election. There’d be something wrong if the FBI didn’t investigate theim. The FBI did NOT lie to the FISA judge. That’s a baseless red herring. Please stick to the facts, instead of making things up.