The Inspector General's Report is clear: the FBI had an authorized purpose to open its investigation
by digby
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz found that
"[T'he FBI had an authorized purpose when it opened Crossfire Hurricane --- the investigation into the Trump campaign -- to obtain information about, or protect against, a national security threat or federal crime. We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions ..."
That report is the result of an 18 month investigation, with over 170 interviews and reviews of a million pages of documents. It was thorough.
Here's former FBI Acting Director Andrew McCabe months ago spelling out what they saw and why they did it:
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"I'm saying that the FBI had reason to investigate that."
Of course they did. Along with the chatter from Papadopoulos and elsewhere about the Russians planning to sabotage Clinton's campaign, they had been investigating Paul Manafort for months on his illegal pro-Russia Ukraine business dealings when Trump suddenly up and hired him to be his campaign manager! If they hadn't been suspicious they would have been derelict in their duties.
And remember, they were concurrently investigating Clinton for "her emails" AND for the Uranium One nonsense, which was "predicated" on the right wing political hit job called "Clinton Cash" by Steve Bannon's partner. So this ridiculous hand-wringing by Barr over "investigating political actors" sure does seem to only go one way.
But there are few people sitting in jail who were involved in all this and a whole bunch of indictments of Russians who did exactly what the FBI and the Intelligence Community suspected them of doing. Because of Trump's obstruction of justice as president all they could do was prove that the campaign had "welcomed" the Russian help, which should be impeachable all by itself.
And yes the Carter Page FISA process was deeply flawed, coming as no surprise to people who actually follow these issues and know how that happens, but it was not central to the case, had nothing to do with why they opened the investigation, took place after Page had left the Trump campaign (due to his ties to Russia. The weaknesses in tht system need to be fixed --- and have needed to be fixed for a long time, although until now the Republicans were opposed nearly across the board. I hope they all see the need to give some money to the ACLU not that they are born again civil libertarians.
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