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Watchdog report: FBI’s Trump-Russia probe justified, no bias

WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI was justified in opening its investigation into ties between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia
and did not act with political bias, the Justice Department’s internal
watchdog declared Monday, undercutting President Donald Trump’s repeated
claims that he has merely been the target of a “witch hunt.”

The
long-awaited report rejected theories and criticism spread by Trump and
his supporters, though it also found “serious performance failures” up
the bureau’s chain of command that are likely to be cited by Republican
allies as the president faces a probable impeachment vote this month.

The review by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz
found that the FBI was authorized to open the investigation to protect
against a potential national security threat. Information compiled by
former British spy Christopher Steele, a focus of Republican criticism,
“played no role in the Crossfire Hurricane opening,” the report said,
using the name the FBI gave its investigation.

And the report
ruled out political bias in the decision to investigate ties between the
Trump campaign and Russia, a frequent contention by Trump.

But
the inspector general identified 17 “significant inaccuracies or
omissions” in applications for a warrant from the secretive Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor the communications of former
Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and subsequent warrant renewals,
although it also found the bureau was justified in eavesdropping on
Page. The errors, the watchdog said, resulted in “applications that made
it appear that the information supporting probable cause was stronger
than was actually the case.”

Some of that information came from
Steele. The watchdog found that the FBI had overstated the significance
of Steele’s past work as an informant, omitted information about one of
his sources whom Steele had called a “boaster” and who Steele said “may
engage in some embellishment.”

Republicans have long criticized
the process since the FBI relied in part on opposition research from
Steele, whose work was financed by Democrats and Hillary Clinton’s
presidential campaign and that fact was not disclosed to the judges who
approved the FISA warrant.

The report’s release, coming the same day as a House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearing
centered on the president’s interactions with Ukraine, brought fresh
attention to the legal and political investigations that have entangled
the White House from the moment Trump took office.

Political divisions were evident in responses to the report.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said it makes clear that the
basis for the FBI’s investigation was “valid and without political
bias.” Trump, in remarks at the White House, claimed it showed “an
attempted overthrow and a lot of people were in on it.”

The
president has repeatedly said he is more eager for the report of John
Durham, the hand-picked prosecutor selected by Attorney General William
Barr to conduct a separate review of the Russia probe.

Barr and
Durham both rejected the inspector general’s conclusion that there was
sufficient evidence to open the FBI investigation. The attorney
general’s reaction was especially unusual in that the head of the
Justice Department typically would not take issue with an internal
investigation that clears a department agency of serious misconduct.

“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 in a statement.

Durham, in a brief statement,
said he had informed the inspector general that he also didn’t agree
with the conclusion that the inquiry was properly opened, and suggested
his own investigation would back up his disagreement.

In an
interview with The Associated Press, FBI Director Chris Wray noted the
report’s conclusion that political bias did not taint the opening of the
investigation, or the steps that followed. But Wray said the inspector
general found problems that are “unacceptable and unrepresentative of
who we are as an institution.” The FBI is implementing more than 40
corrective actions, he said.

The FBI’s Russia investigation, which
was ultimately taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller, began in
July 2016 after the FBI learned that a former Trump campaign aide,
George Papadopoulos, had been saying before it was publicly known that
Russia had dirt on Democratic opponent Clinton in the form of stolen
emails. Those emails, which were hacked from Democratic email accounts
by Russian intelligence operatives, were released by WikiLeaks in the
weeks before the election in what U.S. officials have said was an effort
to harm Clinton’s campaign and help Trump.

Months later, the FBI
sought and received the Page warrant. Officials were concerned that Page
was being targeted for recruitment by the Russian government, though he
has denied wrongdoing and has never been charged with a crime.

The
inspector general also found that an FBI lawyer is suspected of
altering an email to make it appear that an official at another
government agency had said Page was not a source for that agency, even
though he was.

Agents were concerned that if Page had worked as a
source for another government agency, the FBI would have needed to tell
the surveillance court about that, the report said, and contacted the
other agency to obtain additional information. But the FBI lawyer “did
not accurately convey, and in fact altered, the information he received
from the other agency,” the report said.

The lawyer is not
identified by name in the report, but people familiar with the situation
have identified him as Kevin Clinesmith. The inspector general’s report
said officials notified the attorney general and FBI director and
provided them with information about the altered email.

The
inspector general conducted more than 170 interviews involving more than
100 witnesses, including former FBI director James Comey, former
Attorney General Loretta Lynch, former Deputy Attorney General Sally
Yates, former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversaw the
Russia investigation, and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe,
along with FBI agents and analysts.

___

Associated Press
writers Mark Sherman, Alan Fram, Mary Clare Jalonick, Jonathan Lemire
and Colleen Long contributed to this report.