Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz did not find that the FBI officials in charge of the agency’s investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia were working to undermine President Donald Trump.
Unnamed officials told the New York Times and the Washington Post on Friday that while Horowitz’ report will criticize the errors he discovered in the early stages of the investigation, the inspector general will debunk Trump and his Republican allies’ accusation that the probe was borne and conducted out of anti-Trump bias.
The officials said Horowitz also found that the FBI did not open the investigation based on the infamous Christopher Steele dossier nor leaked information from the CIA, as Trump and other conservatives have also claimed.
The report will say that there were several errors in process to obtain a court approval to wiretap Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, such as relevant documents containing information that “should have been left out,” in the Times’ words, while also missing information that ought to have been included.
Horowitz found that a low-level FBI lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, had altered a document in the application for the surveillance warrant, though he is not expected to conclude Clinesmith of did so out of opposition to Trump, nor that the document proves investigators improperly sought out the warrant.
The report will be made public on December 9.
