Inspector General Denies FBI Spied On Trump In Bid To Keep Him Out Of White House

Inspector General Michael Horowitz on Wednesday disputed President Trump’s repeated assertions that the FBI had wiretapped conversations at Trump Tower during the 2016 presidential campaign as part of a conspiracy to keep him from winning the election.

In an exchange with Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Horowitz delivered a broad denial of claims by Trump and his supporters that during former President Barack Obama’s tenure, the FBI had spied in hopes of gaining information that would bring Trump down.

Asked by Blumenthal whether he found any evidence the FBI tapped the phones at Trump Tower, Horowitz replied: "No.… The only wiretapping or the only surveillance we found was what’s laid out here."

The Justice Department watchdog was referring to a report released Monday that faulted the FBI’s role in a warrant involving former Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page over alleged contact between Page and Russian officials facing possible U.S. sanctions. The report called the FBI investigation justified and revealed no bias against Trump.

The report did, however, find numerous omissions and inaccurate statements in an application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to conduct surveillance of Page.

But responding to a question from Sen. Christopher Coons, D-Del., about the allegations of Trump Tower phone tapping Horowitz said, “We didn’t find any evidence the FBI had tapped any other phones or anything else other than the FISA that we addressed.”

Blumenthal also questioned Horowitz about a repeated Trump claim that the FBI had planted informants in the Trump campaign.

"We did not find evidence that the FBI sought to place confidential human sources inside the campaign or plant them inside the campaign," Horowitz responded.

Trump’s claims spread through Republican circles, with conspiracy theories that a “deep state” consisting of Obama supporters had secretly spied on his campaign to try to ensure his defeat.

The claim rapidly took hold among conservative Republicans after an incendiary March 4, 2017, tweet in which Trump wrote: “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”

Trump followed it up with another tweet, saying: “How low has President Obama gone to tapp [sic] my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!”

Republicans on the committee repeated Trump’s familiar claim that the FBI during the Obama administration had been involved in a vast conspiracy to keep Trump from winning the presidency.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said the FBI's Russia investigation resembled the tactics of the agency under J. Edgar Hoover, "as if J. Edgar Hoover came back to life."

"The old FBI — the FBI that had a chip on its shoulder and wanted to intimidate people ... former FBI Director James Comey said this week that your report vindicates him. Is that a fair assessment?" Graham asked.

“The activities we found here don’t vindicate anybody who touched this,” Horowitz said.

The hearing came after Trump attacked the FBI while at a rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

"They've destroyed the lives of people that were great people, that are still great people," Trump said. "Their lives have been destroyed by scum.”