Barr: FBI caused one of 'greatest travesties' in U.S. history

FPI / April 13, 2020

The FBI not only lacked sufficient evidence to investigate the 2016 Trump campaign, but investigators went beyond "mistakes or sloppiness" to "sabotaging the presidency," Attorney General William Barr said.

What the FBI did to Trump in the Russia hoax was one of the “greatest travesties in American history,” Barr told Fox News host Laura Ingraham in an interview broadcast on Thursday.

Relying mainly on the bogus dossier by Christopher Steele which was paid for by the Deomcratic Party and Hillary Clinton's campaign, the FBI opened the Trump investigation on July 31, 2016.

In March 2017, then-FBI Director James Comey announced at a House hearing that the entire campaign was under investigation for any links to Russian government officials.

In the end, special counsel Robert Mueller concluded, after a 22-month investigation, that he did not establish a conspiracy and no Trump ally was charged in election interference.

Barr told Ingraham: “I think the president has every right to be frustrated because I think what happened to him was one of the greatest travesties in American history. Without any basis, they [FBI] started this investigation of his campaign and even more concerning actually is what happened after the campaign. A whole pattern of events while he was president to sabotage the presidency, or at least having the effect of sabotaging the presidency.”

As for the warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Barr said, “The people who abused FISA have a lot to answer.”

FBI agents didn’t seek approval from the DOJ to start the Trump investigation. Barr has since changed the rules to require any investigation into a presidential campaign to require the attorney general’s approval.

John Durham, a U.S. attorney and the attorney general’s special investigator, is investigating the origins of the Trump-Russia election investigation.

Barr said Durham's primary focus "isn’t to prepare a report. He’s looking to bring to justice people who are engaged in abuses if he can show that there were criminal violations and that is what the focus is on, building these cases, especially the sprawling case we have between us that went on for two or three years here.

Barr added: “It takes some time to build a case. So he’s diligently pursuing it. My own view is that the evidence shows we’re not dealing with just mistakes or sloppiness. There’s something far more troubling here and we’re going to get to the bottom of it ... and if people broke the law and we can establish that with the evidence they will be prosecuted.”

Free Press International