. . . how can you have much confidence in the people who developed it?
WSJ reports: (and NYT and WaPo)
– Inspector general’s report is expected to find that surveillance of former Trump aide was legally justified, but to also cite missteps including the alleged alteration of an email by an FBI lawyer
– “The report isn’t expected to accuse top FBI officials of abusing their authority because they were biased against Mr. Trump, a person familiar with it said—a claim the president and his supporters have long alleged. “
WASHINGTON—The Justice Department’s inspector general is expected to conclude there was a proper legal basis for the government’s application to monitor a former Trump campaign foreign-policy adviser, but that errors and lapses in judgment were made during the process, according to people familiar with the matter.
Among the findings identified in the report is that an FBI lawyer altered an email related to the surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser, people familiar with the matter said Friday. The conduct didn’t change the watchdog’s overall conclusion.
The allegation, detailed in Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s extensive review into early steps the Federal Bureau of Investigation took in its Russia investigation, is likely to fuel partisan debate over the bureau’s handling of the probe.
Mr. Horowitz told lawmakers this week he plans to release his findings on Dec. 9. Mr. Horowitz has promised minimal redactions in the report, which is hundreds of pages long, a person familiar with it said.
The report isn’t expected to accuse top FBI officials of abusing their authority because they were biased against Mr. Trump, a person familiar with it said—a claim the president and his supporters have long alleged.
But the report is expected to criticize certain aspects of the FBI’s handling of the surveillance warrants against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, including the use of human sources in the report, according to people briefed on the document.
People familiar with the findings identified the lawyer under investigation as Kevin Clinesmith, an FBI attorney who worked with line agents on some of the surveillance warrants against Mr. Page.
Mr. Clinesmith is alleged to have changed an email related to an application to renew a warrant seeking court approval to monitor Mr. Page, one of the people said.
He left the bureau after officials were briefed on the allegations, one of the people said.
He played a part in the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information, as well as in the early stages of the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. That put him at the center of two politically explosive investigations whose fallout continues to rock the FBI. Mr. Clinesmith interviewed Trump campaign foreign-policy adviser George Papadopoulos in February 2017 in Chicago, according to Mr. Papadopoulos’s congressional testimony.
The altered document appeared to be an email received by Mr. Clinesmith from another government official, according to a person familiar with the matter. He then made additions to that email before passing it to higher ups working on the surveillance warrant without making it clear that he had made alterations, the person said. The complete context of the exchange couldn’t be determined.
Mr. Horowitz referred the case to prosecutors for possible criminal charges.
Mr. Clinesmith and his lawyer didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Spokespeople for the FBI, Justice Department and Mr. Horowitz declined to comment.
Mr. Horowitz’s office has been examining since March 2018 the decisions the FBI and the Justice Department made in obtaining court approval to monitor the communications of Mr. Page.
Mr. Page was one of four advisers to Mr. Trump who came under FBI scrutiny as the bureau launched a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign and any links it might have had to Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election.
Mr. Trump and his Republican allies have argued that the president and his associates were unfairly targeted by politically biased agents. Officials involved in the probe have defended their handling of the case as appropriate, given the severity of the allegations.
The allegation that a document was altered was earlier reported by CNN.
Mr. Clinesmith also surfaced in an inspector general review last year of the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email investigation, to which he was assigned early in 2016. That report said an individual it called “Attorney 2” sent another FBI employee text messages that Mr. Horowitz said referenced political issues, often involving Mr. Trump, including some that raised concerns of potential bias. A GOP member of Congress, Mark Meadows, in a 2018 congressional hearing identified Mr. Clinesmith as “Attorney 2.”
For example, the earlier report said that the day after the 2016 election, Mr. Clinesmith sent messages lamenting Mr. Trump’s win, including that he was “just devastated,” and “it’s just hard not to feel like the FBI caused some of this.”
“This is the tea party on steroids,” he texted during the exchange. “And the GOP is going to be lost, they have to deal with an incumbent in 4 years. We have to fight this again. Also Pence is stupid.”
In a different exchange later in November 2016, Mr. Clinesmith texted “Viva le resistance,” which he denied signaled that he planned to fight back against Mr. Trump.
Mr. Clinesmith told the inspector general at the time the text messages had no impact on his investigations, according to the earlier report.
In that review, published in June 2018, Mr. Horowitz found what he called troubling political text messages among a number of FBI employees working on the Clinton email and Russia investigations, but no evidence that political bias had affected major prosecutorial or investigative decisions made by the Justice Department or FBI.
In his forthcoming report, Mr. Horowitz concluded there was a legal and factual basis to monitor Mr. Page, the people familiar with it said. But Mr. Trump and his allies are likely to seize on it to bolster their allegation that FBI officials abused their surveillance authority and improperly directed the nation’s spy programs at people affiliated with the Trump campaign.
Mr. Trump on Friday told “Fox & Friends” he expected the report would be “historic.”
“Now, what you’re going to see, I predict, will be perhaps the biggest scandal in the history of our country,” Mr. Trump said, adding that he would let Attorney General William Barr “handle it.”
The allegation will likely factor into a separate but similar investigation being conducted by Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham at the request of Mr. Barr into the early stages of the Russia investigation. That review has become a criminal investigation, a person familiar with it said last month.
The FBI’s broad counterintelligence inquiry ultimately became special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. The Mueller investigation didn’t find that the Trump campaign had conspired with Russian efforts to interfere in the election, but it did result in the prosecution and conviction of multiple Trump associates, largely for lying to investigators and financial crimes.
