President Donald Trump on Tuesday disagreed with FBI Director Christopher Wray’s citation of a Justice Department inspector general report on the origins of the so-called “Spygate” investigation into his 2016 presidential campaign which concluded that the probe was not motivated by politics.
“I don’t know what report current Director of the FBI Christopher Wray was reading, but it sure wasn’t the one given to me,” the president tweeted.
“With that kind of attitude, he will never be able to fix the FBI, which is badly broken despite having some of the greatest men & women working there!”
In an interview with ABC News following the report’s release on Monday, Wray said it was “important” that Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz found the investigation was opened “with appropriate predication and authorization.”
During his lengthy investigation, Horowitz discovered evidence that FBI officials misled the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court about the reliability of a key source of information, former British spy Christopher Steele, in obtaining surveillance warrants for four Trump campaign officials.
In addition, the report found that the FBI committed multiple errors in its applications for surveillance.
However, Horowitz claimed there was no political bias behind the probe’s launch.
The president and his allies, however, dispute that, noting that the Obama administration, which launched the probe, was backing Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Also, they point to scores of text messages between former FBI officials disparaging then-candidate Trump in the run-up to the 2016 election.
Finally, U.S. Attorney John Durham, who is conducting a criminal probe of Spygate’s origins, issued a statement Monday saying he disagreed with portions of Horowitz’s conclusions.
“Our investigation has included developing information from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside of the U.S.,” he said.
“Based on the evidence collected to date, and while our investigation is ongoing last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.”