Attorney General William Barr told a House panel on Tuesday that he put together a team to look at how the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign and Russian interference started in the summer of 2016. The inquiry is separate from the Justice Department’s inspector general probe on the matter, a source told Bloomberg News.
“I am reviewing the conduct of the investigation and trying to get my arms around all the aspects of the counterintelligence investigation that was conducted during the summer of 2016,” Barr told the House panel on Tuesday.
The move indicates Barr is following Republicans’ lead on the matter. GOP lawmakers have been pursuing the idea — that the Russia probe was born out of an anti-Trump bias within the FBI and DOJ — for more than a year.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and other prominent Republicans have already indicated plans to launch new probes into how the investigation started, once the furor over the impending release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report has cooled.
