Remarking on the details revealed in the newly released inspector general report, US President Donald Trump told reporters that the revelations were “an embarrassment to our country.”
“I was just briefed on it and it’s a disgrace what’s happened with respect to the things that were done to our country,” Trump said. “It should never again happen to another president.”
“It is incredible. Far worse than I would’ve ever thought possible. It’s an embarrassment to our country, it’s dishonest. It’s everything that a lot of people thought it would be, except far worse,” he continued.
The report, titled “Review of Four FISA Applications and Other Aspects of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane Investigation,” determined that the FBI “had an authorized purpose when it opened Crossfire Hurricane to obtain information about, or protect against, a national security threat or federal crime, even though the investigation also had the potential to impact constitutionally protected activity.”
However, it also noted that there were “serious performance failures by the supervisory and non-supervisory agents with responsibility over the FISA applications,” and that FBI officials “fell far short of the requirement in FBI policy that they ensure that all factual statements in a FISA application are ‘scrupulously accurate.'”
Inspector General Michael Horowitz also detailed in his findings that there were “at least 17 significant errors or omissions” in FBI applications to surveil former Trump adviser Carter Page. However, most importantly, the investigation found that there was no “documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation” influenced the FBI’s decision to open probes into George Papadopoulos, Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn, among other Trump campaign associates.
Shortly after the report was released to the public, John Durham, the US attorney in Connecticut, issued a statement noting that he and his team who are carrying out a separate investigation into the origins of Russiagate “do not agree with of the report’s conclusions as to predictions and how the FBI case was opened.” Separately, the FBI in it’s own response indicated that it has “ordered more than 40 corrective steps to address the Report’s recommendations.”
Source: Sputnik
