WASHINGTON (CN) — The Senate took up the Justice Department’s internal watchdog report on the origins of the Russia investigation Wednesday, with Democrats and Republicans unpacking diametric takes on the inspector general’s findings.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that his internal probe found no evidence of political bias impacting the investigation, codenamed Crossfire Hurricane and opened in July 2016. Former special counsel Robert Mueller in 2017 took over the investigation that President Donald Trump has long called a “witch hunt.”
Ranking member Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said the report makes clear the investigation into Russian interference and the Trump campaign was based on facts and not bias.
“This was not a politically motivated investigation,” Feinstein said. “There is no deep state.”
But Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., in opening remarks that ran over 40 minutes, said the FBI was spying on the Trump campaign.
“And imagine ladies and gentleman,” Graham said, “If they can do this to the candidate for the president of the United States, what could they do to you?”
Attorney General Bill Barr came out with a statement Monday sharply critical of Horowitz’s report, compiled after 19 months of reviewing over 1 million documents and interviewing over 100 witnesses.
“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,” Barr said.
But Horowitz said his team stands by their report.
“I didn’t take the IG job to be popular and not have my feelings hurt,” he told the committee.
Senator Richard Blumenthal, D-N.Y., asked Horowitz if he found evidence that the FBI intervened in the 2016 election.
“We did not reach that conclusion,” the inspector general testified.
But Senator Kamala Harris, D-Calif., called on the inspector general to investigate Barr’s foreign trips seeking evidence to back the claim that “deep state” actors in the U.S. coordinated with officials abroad to undermine the Trump campaign.
“You have the power and the duty to investigate misconduct committed by the attorney general of the United States, who is doing the bidding of the president to undermine our intelligence community,” Harris said.
But Horowitz and his team did uncover 17 “significant inaccuracies and omissions” across the four applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
“It would be like getting a lab report from the FBI, the fingerprints don’t match and the agent says they do. That’s how bad this is,” Graham said. Hours later the senator told the committee “poor Carter Page.”
Asked by Blumenthal if he agreed with the Republican characterizations of the FBI’s conduct as “grotesque abuses of power,” Horowitz said: “We did not reach a conclusion like that so I wouldn’t agree with that.”
Senator Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., asked Horowitz if the errors were only in warrants to surveil Page.
“That is correct,” Horowitz said.
Leahy added: “I am not trying to minimize the FBI’s mistakes here, but keep it in context.”
