Previously, it was reported that new cases of FBI violations related to the processing of documents under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act were identified.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday called a disgrace to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) violations, which were revealed by an inspection by Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Justice Michael Horowitz.
“Look at the report prepared by Inspector General Horowitz. “What happened is shameful. “It’s a disgrace. <…> They were caught red-handed”, – Trump said.
Earlier Tuesday, Horowitz reported on new FBI violations. They are related to the processing of documents under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). In particular, the Justice Ministry said it failed to gain access to a number of supporting documents for applications for surveillance, which are required by law. In such documents, agency officials must justify that the application is based on reliable facts before it is submitted to the court.
The current audit began after Horowitz published a report in December 2019 on the circumstances surrounding the start of surveillance of Donald Trump’s campaign headquarters. The Inspector stated that he “did not find documentary evidence or evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced” the decision to start the case. Despite this, Horowitz identified a number of “significant errors and deficiencies” in the FBI’s work. The inspector general’s concern was how “certain aspects of the investigation were conducted and monitored, especially the FBI’s failure to adhere to its own standards of accuracy and completeness,” including when he was sanctioned to monitor Trump’s former campaign adviser Carter Page.
Trump and representatives of his administration have repeatedly accused U.S. intelligence officials of keeping an eye on his campaign headquarters. The circumstances of the start of this surveillance were the subject of at least three separate proceedings of the US Department of Justice, which simultaneously serves as the Attorney General’s Office. Representatives of the administration called to find out if there were any violations in the investigation of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller.
On April 18, 2019, the US Department of Justice released the final report of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller. He claimed that Russia was trying to influence the presidential election campaign in the United States in 2016. At the same time, Mueller admitted that the investigation did not reveal conspiracy of election-winning Donald Trump with Russia. Trump himself has repeatedly called the ongoing investigation a “witch hunt” and denied all accusations of collusion with Moscow. Russia has also repeatedly rejected allegations of attempts to influence the US elections.