WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump on Wednesday lashed out again at his attorney general, questioning why the man he picked as the country’s top law enforcement official was relying on the Justice Department’s Inspector General to review alleged surveillance abuses.
In a message that takes some liberties with the facts, Trump wrote, “Why is A.G. Jeff Sessions asking the Inspector General to investigate potentially massive FISA abuse. Will take forever, has no prosecutorial power and already late with reports on Comey etc. Isn’t the I.G. an Obama guy? Why not use Justice Department lawyers? DISGRACEFUL!”
Trump was referring to Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s assertion the day before that Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz would look into alleged surveillance abuses that legislators on the House Intelligence Committee have been debating in recent weeks. An inspector general spokesman confirmed the attorney general had asked the office to review such issues but declined further comment.
Why is A.G. Jeff Sessions asking the Inspector General to investigate potentially massive FISA abuse. Will take forever, has no prosecutorial power and already late with reports on Comey etc. Isn’t the I.G. an Obama guy? Why not use Justice Department lawyers? DISGRACEFUL!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 28, 2018
Republicans on the committee, especially chairman Rep. Devin Nunes of California, have alleged that the FBI and Justice Department misled the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to obtain a warrant to monitor former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, while Democrats have countered that their GOP colleagues are misstating the facts.
The two sides in recent weeks issued dueling memos on the topic.
The first, from Republicans, said the FBI used information that was ultimately funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee to obtain the warrant on Page, and that and other findings amounted to “a troubling breakdown of legal processes established to protect the American people from abuses related to the FISA process,” a reference to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
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But the FBI disputed the accuracy of the Republicans’ statements, and Democrats fired back Saturday with their own memo saying the bureau had been unfairly maligned. By the Democrats’ telling, the FBI had been interested in Page for years for his contacts with Russians, and the bureau told the court specific details of where their information on Page came from.
The FBI revealed, for example, that a source whose information the bureau was relying on in-part to obtain the warrant had first been approached by a “U.S. person” who had been hired “to conduct research regarding Candidate #1’s ties to Russia.” The source was Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer who produced a now infamous dossier of damaging allegations against Trump.
“The FBI speculates that the U.S. person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit candidate #1’s campaign,” the application says. Candidate #1 is a reference to Trump.
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Trump has previously criticized the FBI, the Justice Department, and his own attorney general – whose decision to recuse himself from the investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with the Kremlin to influence the 2016 election has long irked the president. Even after the Democrats released their memo, Trump wrote on Twitter, “Just confirms all of the terrible things that were done. SO ILLEGAL!”
When Sessions revealed Tuesday he had asked the inspector general to look into the matter, the White House seemed pleased at first.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said at a briefing that while she had not spoken with the president about the matter, “it’s something that he’s clearly had frustration over, so I would imagine he certainly supports the decision to look into what we feel to be some wrongdoing. I think that’s the role of the Department of Justice, and we’re glad that they’re fulfilling that job.”
Nunes said Tuesday, though, that he was not aware of any plans to launch an inspector general investigation off the back of his findings – and doubted that the inspector general ultimately would launch such a probe. Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the House Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat was chagrined by the development.
“If that’s accurate, it represents another weakening of the independence of the Justice Department, and it would mark another sad turn for our system of checks and balances,” he said.
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Sessions has previously proven to be responsive to GOP requests. Late last year, following inquiries on a host of Republican concerns largely centered around Hillary Clinton, Sessions directed senior federal prosecutors to look into the matters and report back to him. He indicated he was at least entertaining the idea of a second special counsel.
Even before the president’s tweet, as congressional leaders raised questions about surveillance abuses, Sessions said he would forward to “appropriate DOJ components” the information he was receiving from legislators.
Horowitz’s office and its lawyers are a part of the Justice Department, though they serve as a sort-of ombudsman to police internal wrongdoing. Special agents in his investigations division develop cases for possible criminal prosecution, though on noncriminal matters, his office mainly issues reports. He was confirmed as the inspector general in 2012, during the Obama administration.
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His office has garnered a high profile lately, as it has investigated the FBI’s handling of the probe into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. Among the matters Horowitz is looking at are former FBI Director James Comey’s July 2016 announcement that he was recommending the case be closed with no charges, and Comey’s decision in October 2016 – on the eve of the election – to reveal that the bureau had resumed its work.
That investigation, which was opened in January 2017, led Horowitz to a discovery that also has been of interest to Trump and Republican congressional leaders: texts between two senior FBI officials who had been assigned to both the Clinton and Russia cases who seemed to dislike the president.
The Washington Post’s Anne Gearan, Devlin Barrett and Sari Horwitz contributed to this report.