Justice Department officials will soon interview some senior CIA officers as part of Attorney General William Barr’s “investigate the investigators” review of the origins of the Russia probe, The New York Times reported.
According to people briefed on the matter who spoke to the Times, Justice Department investigators are interested in hearing from a senior counterintelligence official and a CIA analyst who were directly involved in efforts to understand the degree of Russian meddling in 2016 from the onset of the probe. The inquiry is reportedly making CIA officials anxious, according to the Times.
The review is all part of Barr’s interest in reviewing whether the Russia probe was handled legally and ethically from its earliest days, particularly in regards to the intelligence community’s surveillance of some key Trump campaign members. Barr seems to believe that “spying” occurred, a word he borrowed from President Trump, who has consistently deemed the entire probe into Russian election interference a “witch hunt.”
