Who knows what prompted IG Michael Horowitz to investigate FBI and DOJ FISA abuse? I’m asking because I don’t know. If you have cites they would be greatly appreciated.
Here (Warning: PDF) is a press release from the DOJ:
I’d refer you to this portion:
Thank you.
Most specifically, probably Chuck Grassley’s letter:
It was overshadowed in the public by “The Nunes Memo” (the original one, not the new one) that was released around the same time and attempted to make similar accusations (while, largely, shooting itself in the foot).
Previous to Mueller coming in, the Republican House and Senate, both the intelligence and justice committees, were all four investigating Trump. They pretend that it was only ever Democrats who thought that Trump had a genuine likelihood of being guilty of working with Russia, but the fact that they established multiple hardcore investigations into him almost immediately puts that to the lie.
Once Mueller was brought in, they were able to switch over to the defense, and they still had all of those materials from the FBI investigations that they had been reviewing. In that, Grassley’s team determined that there had been some sloppiness in the Page investigation and he wrote that letter up. But he had, in essence, already determined what Horowitz would find.
Horowitz, in essence, is more like the bully boy than the investigator.
Grassley is the head of oversight for FISA so if he says that the FBI is being sloppy then they’re being sloppy. But, notably, it’s significantly more laborious to write a thorough report that really takes people to task than it is to spot the need for such a thing to exist.
I can read, for example, the Horowitz report well enough to know what’s important in it in a few hours. In those same few hours, I could write a couple of pages of something that makes a reasonable argument and has a few cites (similar to Grassley’s letter) but would, obviously, fall well short of being something that you might call an authoritative report.
Horowitz, in essence, fleshed out Grassley’s letter into a full thing. And, in so doing, provides the mechanism by which the shit rolls downhill from the Senate Justice Committee to the members of the Executive branch.
If you read Grass let’s letter, the IG report was no big surprise.
(Whereas, if you only read the Nunes memo. Teh lolz.)
Straight up question moved from GD to GQ.
Moderator Note
The OP previously opened a version of the question in GQ, which I closed and told him to reopen in GD. I think it’s sufficiently political that it belongs in GD.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator