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Highlights From the Horowitz Report on the Russia Investigation What to Look for in the Watchdog Report on the Russia Investigation
(about 5 hours later)
WASHINGTON — A much-anticipated report on the early stages of the F.B.I.’s investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia heavily criticized how the F.B.I. obtained court orders to eavesdrop on a former Trump campaign aide but found no evidence of political bias or improper motivation by the F.B.I. WASHINGTON — The Justice Department’s independent inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, is expected to release a much-anticipated report on Monday that will delve into the early stages of the F.B.I.’s investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia’s 2016 election-interference operation.
The report by the Justice Department’s independent inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, is an exhaustive examination of a case that has reverberated throughout official Washington for more than three years. Totaling more than 400 pages, it found no evidence to back up the president’s claim that the F.B.I.’s investigations of his campaign and four former aides were inspired and tainted by political bias. The high-stakes case has pervaded throughout official Washington for more than three years, upending Republicans’ longstanding support for federal law enforcement, overturning the bureau’s leadership and igniting scrutiny that has continued long past the exhaustive special counsel’s report released in April.
But in a finding that President Trump is certain to seize on, the report documented a pattern of omissions, errors and inconsistencies in the bureau’s applications for warrants to eavesdrop on Carter Page, a former Trump campaign aide. President Trump and his allies mounted a counteroffensive that was part defense, part redirection — accusing the F.B.I. of engaging in an unlawful attempted coup and raising many conspiracy theories. Their allegations fell to Mr. Horowitz to investigate, and we expect his report to address a handful of major questions.
Here are some of the key findings. This conspiracy theory is multifaceted and complex, but the report is expected to debunk its essential elements.
The report debunked essential elements of the president’s theory about partisan motivations. The president’s narrative, for which he has offered little evidence, is essentially that a cabal of politically biased law enforcement and intelligence officials — a “deep state” — set out to sabotage and spy on his campaign because they were opposed to his election and wanted to undermine him if he won. Under this narrative, there was a wide-reaching conspiracy to use false opposition research funded by Democrats to justify opening an investigation that would allow them to infiltrate and spy on the Trump campaign, wiretap a former Trump campaign adviser and sabotage Mr. Trump’s presidency.
In an F.B.I. operation that began July 31, 2016 and was dubbed “Crossfire Hurricane,” the bureau opened investigations into four Trump campaign officials: Mr. Page; Paul Manafort, who stepped down that month as campaign chairman; George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser, and Michael T. Flynn, who went to become Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser. According to people briefed on a draft of his report, Mr. Horowitz did not find evidence supporting the narrative that Mr. Trump and his allies have spent the better part of three years promulgating.
The president and his allies have claimed that a cabal of politically biased law enforcement and intelligence officials — a “deep state” — set out to sabotage and spy on the Trump campaign because they opposed Mr. Trump. They have alleged that the F.B.I. deliberately relied on false opposition research as part of a conspiracy infiltrate and spy on the Trump campaign and later, to undermine Mr. Trump’s presidency. The report is expected to fault the F.B.I. and the Justice Department for bureaucratic shortcomings.
Mr. Horowitz did not find evidence supporting that narrative. Mr. Horowitz closely scrutinized every aspect of the early stages of the Trump-Russia investigation, interviewing all of the main and secondary players and going through all of the paperwork from each stage in search of mistakes, procedural fouls or deliberate wrongdoing. While his inquiry is not expected to support Mr. Trump’s accusations, that does not mean Mr. Horowitz found no serious flaws.
“We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions” by the bureau, the report concluded. He is expected to say that law enforcement officials failed to coordinate properly and made numerous errors and omissions related to the application seeking a federal court’s permission to wiretap Carter Page, a former Trump foreign adviser, and three renewals of the court order.
The report also said, “Witnesses told us that they did not recall observing during these discussions any instances or indications of improper motivations or political bias on the part of the participants.” The F.B.I.’s decision to open the investigation met the legal threshold and was not undertaken out of political bias, Mr. Horowitz is expected to conclude.
There were serious errors in the applications for secret eavesdropping warrants. The F.B.I. opened the investigation into links between Russia and the Trump campaign, dubbed Crossfire Hurricane, on July 30, 2016. Mr. Trump’s allies have suggested that this action was an unjustified act undertaken for political reasons.
Mr. Horowitz found that F.B.I. officials appeared to discount evidence that did not support probable cause to wiretap Mr. Page while playing up information that seemed to justify one. They have also repeatedly claimed that the F.B.I. did so on the basis of dubious information contained in a dossier of claimed links between Mr. Trump and Russia that was compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent who had been commissioned to conduct opposition research by a firm in a project ultimately financed by Democrats.
“That so many basic and fundamental errors were made by three separate, handpicked teams on one of the most sensitive F.B.I. investigations that was briefed to the highest levels within the F.B.I., and that F.B.I. officials expected would eventually be subjected to close scrutiny, raised significant questions regarding the F.B.I. chain of command’s management and supervision of the FISA process,” the report said. Mr. Horowitz is also expected to conclude that information from the Steele dossier was not used to justify opening the inquiry.
The inspector general did not speculate whether the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court would have granted the application — renewed three times — to wiretap Mr. Page anyway. But he said the F.B.I. should review the actions of everyone who had a hand in drafting the applications. And he identified in each application where information verifying a fact was not included. While Mr. Horowitz is expected to conclude that the F.B.I. did not attempt to place informants or undercover agents inside the Trump campaign, it is not clear what else he will say about their use.
Relying on the F. B.I.’s information, the Justice Department first obtained court approval to wiretap Mr. Page in October 2016. The wiretap application portrayed Mr. Page, who had recently stepped down as a Trump campaign aide and had close ties to Russia, as a suspected unregistered agent of a foreign power. Mr. Horowitz found dozens of examples of missing or flawed documentation in the applications to wiretap Mr. Page. As part of the Russia investigation, F.B.I. agents authorized the use of at least one informant to figure out whether Mr. Page and George Papadopoulos, another Trump campaign adviser, were working with the Russians. The informant met with the two men while they were still associated with the campaign. The use of the informant, Stefan A. Halper, a Cambridge professor, has led President Trump and his allies to accuse the F.B.I. of spying on his campaign. The F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, has defended the bureau against accusations of spying.
The applications relied heavily on information provided by Christopher Steele, a British former intelligence agent whose research was funded by Democratic organizations. Mr. Steele told the F.B.I. that he based much of his information on a confidential source. Mr. Horowitz’s team scrutinized the F.B.I.’s roster of informants for any work they might have done in connection with the Russia investigation. But he found that the F.B.I. did not try to infiltrate the campaign itself, according to people briefed on a draft of his report.
But when the F.B.I. interviewed that person, the source failed to back up some of Mr. Steele’s assertions, the report said. For instance, according to the F.B.I. interview, the source saw “nothing bad” about communications between the Trump team and the Kremlin, and never discussed WikiLeaks with Mr. Steele, according to the report. The F.B.I.’s failure to inform the court of those discrepancies was a serious error, Mr. Horowitz said. The inspector general is also expected to say that Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor who met with Mr. Papadopoulos and offered him dirt on Hillary Clinton, was not an F.B.I. informant, debunking a right-wing conspiracy theory. The inspector general is also said to have received no indication from the C.I.A. that the professor worked for the spy agency, either.
“Despite the inconsistencies between Steele’s reporting and the information his primary sub-source provided to the F.B.I., the subsequent FISA renewal applications continued to rely on the Steele information, without any revisions or notice to the court,” the report stated. The report is expected to debunk or reject critiques and claims by Mr. Trump and his allies about the wiretap. But it will also unearth other issues with it.
The F.B.I. also failed to notify the court after it learned that Mr. Steele was desperate for Mr. Trump’s candidacy to fail and “passionate” about the need to defeat him, the report said. Nor did the bureau reveal that Mr. Page had previously given information to the C.I.A. about his contacts with Russian intelligence officials, which might have made his behavior seem less suspicious, Mr. Horowitz found. In October 2016, the Justice Department obtained permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to wiretap Mr. Page, who had recently stepped down from his role as a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign. Mr. Page had close ties to Russia, which he had visited in the summer of 2016, and had previously interacted with Russia’s foreign spy service. The wiretap application, which portrayed Mr. Page as a suspected unregistered agent of a foreign power, was ultimately extended three times — twice by the Trump administration.
In fact, Kevin Clinesmith, an F.B.I. lawyer, altered an email from the C.I.A. to state that Mr. Page was not a source for the intelligence agency. That information was then repeated in an application to renew the warrant. Mr. Horowitz has referred his findings about Mr. Clinesmith for possible criminal investigation for making a false statement. Though Mr. Horowitz is expected to undermine Mr. Trump’s claims about investigators’ pursuit of a wiretap, including how they portrayed information from the Steele dossier, he is expected to say that the paperwork was bungled in other ways no one was talking about.
Attorney General William P. Barr praised one element of the inspector general’s findings, saying the report showed “malfeasance and misfeasance” and “clear abuse” of the wiretap application process by the F.B.I. But Mr. Barr also suggested that he disagreed with Mr. Horowitz’s conclusion that the F.B.I. had sufficient reason to open an investigation of the Trump campaign and Russia. Among his expected findings is that investigators should have told the court in the paperwork that Mr. Page had given information to the C.I.A. in the past about his overseas contacts. Mr. Page has described himself as an unpaid confidential intelligence source to the C.I.A. and F.B.I.
“The inspector general’s report now makes clear that the F.B.I. 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,” Mr. Barr said in a statement. Mr. Horowitz is also expected to say that, as part of one of the renewals of the wiretap, Kevin Clinesmith, a low-level F.B.I. lawyer working on the case, altered an email from another agency that he sent to a colleague who then signed an affidavit attesting to the accuracy of a packet of information, including that email. Mr. Horowitz has made a criminal referral about Mr. Clinesmith for possibly making a false statement that misled his colleague.
John H. Durham, a federal prosecutor whom Mr. Barr appointed to run a separate criminal investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation, backed Mr. Barr’s findings in his own highly unusual statement. “Last month, we advised the inspector general that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the F.B.I. case was opened,” Mr. Durham said. The report is expected to absolve them of taking investigative action out of bias against Mr. Trump.
Mr. Horowitz concluded that the F.B.I. did not attempt to place informants or undercover agents inside the Trump campaign, but he found that the current policy for using informants should include more oversight. Mr. Trump and his allies have demonized a group of top F.B.I. officials who oversaw the opening and early stages of the Trump-Russia investigation, portraying them as a cabal who launched a witch hunt in a politicized coup attempt. These include the former director, James B. Comey; the former deputy and acting director, Andrew G. McCabe; Peter Strzok, a former top counterintelligence agent; Lisa Page, a former F.B.I. lawyer who worked on the case; and James A. Baker, the former general counsel.
As part of the Russia investigation, F.B.I. agents authorized the use of at least one informant to determine whether Mr. Page and Mr. Papadopoulos were working with the Russians. The informant met with the two men while they were still associated with the campaign. During an earlier examination into the handling of investigations into Mrs. Clinton’s personal email server, Mr. Horowitz uncovered the fact that Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page had sent text messages to each other expressing animus toward Mr. Trump while working on the Russia case. He also found messages by Mr. Clinesmith indicating that he did not like Mr. Trump or his policies. The findings led Mr. Mueller to remove Mr. Strzok and Mr. Clinesmith from the special counsel team.
The use of the informant, Stefan A. Halper, a Cambridge professor, has led Mr. Trump and his allies to accuse the F.B.I. of spying on his campaign. The F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, has defended the bureau against accusations of spying. But as he also did in his report on the Clinton email investigation, Mr. Horowitz is expected to say that, while these text messages demonstrated bad judgment and cast a cloud over the bureau, he found no evidence that any of the actions they took with the investigation stemmed from their personal political views, people familiar with the draft said.
Mr. Horowitz found that the F.B.I. did not try to infiltrate the campaign itself. And the inspector general found no evidence that the F.B.I. used informants to interact with anyone on the Trump campaign before the official opening of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. Separately, Mr. Trump’s allies have vilified a senior Justice Department expert in Russian organized crime, Bruce G. Ohr, who knew and met with Mr. Steele even after the F.B.I. had officially severed its relationship with Mr. Steele for speaking to the press about his dossier. Mr. Ohr’s wife, Nellie, was a researcher at Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that hired Mr. Steele.
The inspector general said Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor who met with Mr. Papadopoulos and offered him dirt on Hillary Clinton, was not an F.B.I. informant, debunking a right-wing conspiracy theory. The report is expected to criticize Mr. Ohr for failing to keep his supervisors in the loop about his continued meetings with Mr. Steele, but it is not expected to say that Mr. Ohr was part of any attempted coup.
The report shows the relatively low bar for the F.B.I. to open an incredibly consequential investigation.
Top F.B.I. counterintelligence investigators made the decision to open Crossfire Hurricane without consulting the Justice Department, according to the report. The investigators had consulted with the deputy F.B.I. director and the bureau’s top lawyer.
The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, was not involved in the decision, the report said. Sometime after the investigation was opened, Mr. Comey told the attorney general, Loretta Lynch, and deputy attorney general, Sally Yates, a few details about it.
The Justice Department guidelines for opening an investigation give the F.B.I. the authority to start an investigation — no matter how politically sensitive — on its own.
Nonetheless, Mr. Horowitz noted: “We believe that investigations affecting core First Amendment activity and national political campaigns raise significant constitutional and prudential issues.”
Mr. Horowitz said that in the future a top official — such as the deputy attorney general — should be notified before “such an investigation so that department leadership can consider these issues from the outset.”
The report provides new information about when the F.B.I. started scrutinizing the links.
For the past two years, it has been widely reported that the F.B.I. began its investigation into the Trump campaign in July 2016. But the report provides new details that show that Mr. Page was actually under investigation in April of that year.
According to the report, counterintelligence investigators in New York began the investigation after Mr. Page, who had been on their radar for his ties to Russia, told them about his recent contacts with Russian officials.
The investigators were aware of Mr. Page’s ties to the campaign and were concerned that he might receive a security clearance. They did little work on the investigation into Mr. Page, and in August, agents at the F.B.I.’s headquarters in Washington took over the case.
Mr. Trump has long claimed his predecessor’s administration was behind the investigation.
The report found that President Barack Obama and top White House officials played no role in starting the investigation or the F.I.S.A. application. Mr. Comey said he believes he told Mr. Obama and other top White House officials about the broad outlines of the investigation in an August 2016 meeting in the Situation Room, at least a month after it was opened.
“Comey said he thought it was important that the President know the nature of the F.B.I.’ s efforts without providing any specifics,” according to the report.
Mr. Comey said that the meeting was also attended by the White House chief of staff, Denis McDonough; the national security adviser, Susan Rice; the C.I.A. director, John Brennan; and two other top intelligence officials. Mr. Comey said after he relayed this information no one responded or followed up with questions.
The inspector general also took on media reports that Mr. Brennan gave the F.B.I. information that led to the inquiry. Mr. Comey told the inspector general that the information Mr. Brennan passed to the F.B.I. related to election interference but that Mr. Brennan did not provide any information “that predicated or prompted” the opening of Crossfire Hurricane.
The report appeared to absolve them of taking investigative action out of political bias against Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump and his allies have demonized a group of top F.B.I. officials who oversaw the opening and early stages of the investigation of the Trump campaign, portraying them as participants in an attempted coup. The targets included the former director, James B. Comey; the former deputy and acting director, Andrew G. McCabe; Peter Strzok, a former top counterintelligence agent; Lisa Page, a former F.B.I. lawyer who worked on the case, and James A. Baker, the former general counsel.
Mr. Horowitz had earlier uncovered the fact that Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page had sent text messages to each other expressing animus toward Mr. Trump. He also found messages by Mr. Clinesmith indicating that he did not like Mr. Trump or his policies. The findings led special counsel Robert S. Mueller III to remove Mr. Strzok and Mr. Clinesmith from the special counsel team.
While these electronic messages demonstrated bad judgment and cast a cloud over the bureau, Mr. Horowitz found no evidence that the personal political views of these officials influenced the steps they took with the Russia investigation.
Mr. Trump’s allies have also disparaged Bruce G. Ohr, a senior Justice Department expert in Russian organized crime. Mr. Ohr knew Mr. Steele, met with him and relayed information he got from him to the F.B.I. in more than a dozen meetings after the F.B.I. had officially severed its relationship with the former British intelligence agent. Mr. Ohr’s wife, Nellie, was a researcher at Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm for which Mr. Steele worked until late September 2016.
Mr. Horowitz faulted Mr. Ohr for keeping his supervisors at the Justice Department in the dark about his interactions with Mr. Steele and the F.B.I. Mr. Ohr failed to inform them out of fear that he would be told to stop communicating with Mr. Steele, the report said. While Mr. Ohr did not violate any specific policy, Mr. Horowitz recommended that the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility review Mr. Ohr’s conduct.