The Justice Department inspector general’s report undermined several years of reporting from journalists who defended the Steele dossier and the FBI’s handling of the infamous report.  CNN’s Jim Sciutto was at the forefront in defended the dossier, and the bureau.  In numerous segments since early 2017, Sciutto insisted that parts of the dossier had been corroborated, and that the FBI ...

The Justice Department inspector general’s report on FBI surveillance of the Trump campaign offers a damning assessment of the bureau’s handling of the Steele dossier, and its investigation of Carter Page. Among those deemed “primarily responsible” for the “most significant” errors in the investigation is “Case Agent 1.”  The agent, who still works for the FBI, played a key role ...

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz pulled no punches Wednesday when describing the actions of FBI agents who withheld information regarding Carter Page in order to obtain surveillance warrants against the Trump campaign aide. “It’s pretty bad,” Horowitz told the Senate Judiciary Committee. Horowitz offered the assessment during an exchange with Sen. Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary ...

Sen. Lindsey Graham said Wednesday he hopes that Carter Page “sues the hell” out of the FBI and Justice Department for relying on the unverified Steele dossier to obtain surveillance warrants against the former Trump campaign aide. Graham was speaking at the opening of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to go over a Justice Department inspector general’s report that found ...

Christopher Steele “meticulously” documented and recorded interactions with a key source for his infamous Trump dossier, lawyers for the former British spy said Tuesday in a lengthy response to the Justice Department inspector general’s report on the FBI’s handling of the Russia probe. The report, released Monday, poked holes in the dossier, and revealed that a primary source for Steele ...

Attorney General William Barr on Tuesday blasted the “completely irresponsible press” as well as the FBI for their respective roles in pushing the debunked theory that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government in 2016. Barr said in an interview with NBC News he disagreed with a Justice Department inspector general’s report, released Monday, that said the FBI had ...

The Justice Department watchdog’s report undercut key claims in the so-called Schiff Memo, released in February 2018 by Rep. Adam Schiff. The memo downplayed the Steele dossier’s significance to the FBI’s surveillance of Carter Page. Schiff released it in response to a memo from Rep. Devin Nunes which criticized the FBI’s handling of the dossier.  The DOJ watchdog found that ...

The Justice Department watchdog’s report debunked one of the Steele dossier’s most specific allegations of Trump-Russia collusion, and severely undermined others.  The report also faulted the FBI for failing to thoroughly investigate the dossier, and to tell a federal court about problems with the information collected by Christopher Steele.  One of Steele’s primary sources provided the FBI with information that ...

The FBI failed to inform surveillance court judges that Carter Page was an “operational contact” for the CIA for years, and that an employee at the spy agency gave the former Trump aide a “positive assessment,” according to a Justice Department report released on Monday. The finding is included in a list of seven of the FBI’s “significant inaccuracies and ...

The unverified Steele dossier played a “central and essential role” in the FBI’s decision to apply for surveillance warrants against Trump campaign aide Carter Page, according to the Justice Department inspector general, whose findings undercut a key claim made by Democrats who have defended the bureau’s investigation of the Trump campaign. “We determined that the Crossfire Hurricane team’s receipt of ...

The Justice Department’s watchdog is set to release a report that will focus on the activities of a small handful of now-former FBI officials during the Trump-Russia probe. In an ironic twist, several of those officials have themselves come under scrutiny for a variety of alleged misdeeds.  Here is a list of the officials likely to face scrutiny in the ...

The Justice Department’s inspector general will release a much-anticipated report on the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign on Monday. The report is expected to detail the FBI’s decisions to open the Trump-Russia investigation, as well as the bureau’s efforts to obtain surveillance against a Trump campaign adviser. Michael Horowitz, the inspector general, will testify about the report on Wednesday.  ...

Rep. Devin Nunes on Sunday laid out the list of topics he hopes will be explained in a forthcoming Justice Department watchdog’s report on the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign, including details of a piece of exculpatory information regarding former Trump campaign aide Carter Page that the Republican says was withheld from surveillance court judges. “We know there’s exculpatory ...

One aspect of the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation that will hopefully be explained by the forthcoming DOJ watchdog’s report is the massive gulf between the FBI’s allegations against Carter Page and the findings of the special counsel’s investigation.  FBI officials asserted in FISA applications that Page was a Russian agent involved in a Kremlin conspiracy. But that bold allegations, which was ...

The Republican chairmen of three Senate committees are seeking records from and interviews with a former DNC contractor and a former Ukrainian diplomatic official to determine whether there was any coordination between the Ukrainian government and Democrats in the 2016 election, an allegation which Democrats have dismissed as a conspiracy theory. Sens. Chuck Grassley, Ron Johnson and Lindsey Graham said ...