IG's Russia Inquiry Review Is Said to Criticize F.B.I. but Rebuff Claims of Biased Acts https://nyti.ms/2QP8r34 

The  Justice Department watchdog report will portray the pursuit of a wiretap of an ex-Trump adviser as sloppy, but it also debunks some accusations by Trump allies of F.B.I. wrongdoing.

In particular, while Mr. Horowitz criticizes F.B.I. leadership for its handling of the highly fraught Russia investigation in some ways, he made no finding of politically biased actions by top officials Mr. Trump has vilified . . .

. . . like the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey; Andrew G. McCabe, the former deputy who temporarily ran the bureau after the president fired Mr. Comey in 2017; and Peter Strzok, a former top counterintelligence agent.

Investigators for IG Horowitz uncovered errors and omissions in documents related to the wiretapping of a former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page . . .

. . . Including that a low-level lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, altered an email that officials used to prepare to seek court approval to renew the wiretap, the people said.

The Justice Department obtained three renewal orders. The paperwork associated with the renewal applications contained information that should have been left out, and vice versa, the people briefed on the draft report said.

Mr. Clinesmith took an email from an official at another federal agency that contained several factual assertions, then added material to the bottom that looked like another assertion from the email’s author, when it was instead his own understanding.

Mr. Clinesmith included this altered email in a package that he compiled for another F.B.I. official to read in preparation for signing an affidavit that would be submitted to the court attesting to the facts and analysis in the wiretap application.

The investigators’ referral of its findings on Mr. Clinesmith went to John H. Durham, a prosecutor assigned by Attorney General William P. Barr to himself re-examine the Russia case and its origins.

The referral from Mr. Horowitz’s team appears to be at least in part the basis for the elevation of Mr. Durham’s inquiry from an administrative review to a criminal investigation, the people said.

Additionally, Mr. Clinesmith worked on both the Hillary Clinton email investigation and the Russia investigation.

He was among the F.B.I. officials removed by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, after Mr. Horowitz found text messages expressing political animus against Mr. Trump.

The inspector general apparently did not assert in the draft report that any of the problems he found were so material that the court would have rejected the Justice Department’s requests to continue surveilling Mr. Page.

And in other crucial respects, the draft inspector general report is said not to corroborate conspiracy theories and insinuations offered by Trump and his allies about the early stages of the Russia investigation, before Mueller was appointed as special counsel and took it over.

For example, the draft report also concludes that the F.B.I. had enough evidence to meet the legal standard for opening the investigation, though Mr. Horowitz emphasized that the bar is low, the people said.

The report is also said to conclude that Joseph Mifsud, a Russia-linked professor who told a Trump campaign official that Russia had damaging information on Clinton in the form of hacked Democratic emails — a key fact used to open the investigation — was NOT an FBI informant.

Further - None of the evidence used to open the investigation came from the C.I.A. or from a notorious dossier of claims about Trump-Russia ties compiled by Christopher Steele, the report concludes.

(Thud!)

The court filings in the Page wiretap application said the Steele Dossier material was “used in criminal proceedings,” but it was never part of an affidavit, search warrant or courtroom evidence.

Based on this reporting, IG Horowitz's report found a low level lawyer who embellished something that didn't invalidate what was overall a legitimate investigation into Trump's Russia connections. And the conspiracy theories Trump & GOP push about the investigation are not true.

Trump was not unfairly targeted for political reasons, the Steele Dossier was not the basis of the investigation nor the Carter Page wiretapping . . .

In short: This was not a witchhunt nor a coup nor a plot of Democrat resisters within the FBI. That's all debunked.

Every single person pushing the Joseph Misfud bullshit should slap themselves.