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Former FBI director James Comey fiercely defended the Bureau's counter-espionage investigation during President Trump's 2016 campaign after the New York Times reported on Thursday that the FBI had sent an undercover investigator to meet a Trump campaign advisor.
During an interview with a Los Angeles radio station, Comey claimed that the FBI's actions, criticized by GOP investigators concerned over a political operation aimed at undermining Trump, were limited and even impeccable.
"Really, what would you do with the FBI?" We discover in mid-June 2016 that the Russians have made considerable efforts to screw up this democracy in order to interfere in the elections.We are focused and we learn at the end of July that a Trump campaign advisor – two months earlier, before all this was made public – had spoken to a Russian representative about the fact that the Russians had soiled Hillary Clinton and wanted to organize the broadcast of the Trump campaign " said Comey at KNX 1070 on Friday.
"What should the FBI do when it receives this information? It should investigate to determine if Americans are involved in this massive interference effort," he added. "And that's what we did, and as I said earlier, we should have been fired if we did not do it, and Republicans should breathe into a paper bag." There is no way you can do anything other than what we did, whose use was limited tools to try to understand: is this true? And that's what the investigation was on ".
Comey had supervised the FBI when the office had opened its first counterintelligence investigation, dubbed Crossfire Hurricane, in July 2016. It's about this that the Australian diplomat Alexander Downer had informed the FBI that the campaign advisor of Trump, George Papadopoulos, had told him that Russia had stolen emails related to Hillary Clinton, of Trump. Democratic rival in the 2016 election.
The Times newspaper revealed that a woman named Azra Turk pretended to be an assistant to Stefan Halper, an American professor at the University of Cambridge and an FBI informant about the links between the Trump campaign and Russia. Turk asked Papadopoulos if Trump's campaign was working with the Russians in a London bar in September 2016.
Mark Meadows, GOP lead investigator, said the "leaks" showed that the FBI felt threatened by an investigation by Attorney General William Barr on the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation. Barr, who recently said that "spying took place" on Trump's presidential team, said last week that he "worked closely with" the Inspector General of the US Department of Justice. Justice, Michael Horowitz, investigating possible abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
The FBI has not only used clandestine informants to monitor Trump campaigners with suspicious links to Russia, but also electronic surveillance.
In February 2018, the House Intelligence Committee, then led by R-Calif. President Devin Nunes, issued a note stating that the Trump file, which contained unverified statements regarding Trump's ties to Russia, had been used by the FBI for information. a FISA warrant and three renewals to spy on Trump campaign advisor Carter Page. But key pieces of information, including anti-Trump bias and the author's Democratic benefactors, have been left out. Republicans often cited the use of the file as misinformation used to monitor Trump and his campaign in the months leading up to the 2016 presidential election, while Democrats said in a rebuttal note that the process of FISA had not been abused, as well as the Department of Justice and the FBI "satisfies the rigor, transparency and evidence necessary to meet the requirement of probable cause of the FISA. "
The GOP scandal against alleged spying abuse extends to the White House. In a recent interview with Fox News, Trump said that Comey, whom he had fired from the FBI in May 2017, "was probably one of the leaders of the espionage effort" of his 2016 campaign and had hinted that an upcoming document would be released truth.
Comey strongly disapproved of the use of the word "spying" to describe the FBI's efforts. "When I hear that kind of language, it's worrying because the FBI, the Department of Justice, is conducting a court-ordered electronic surveillance," said Comey at the conference "Verify Conference" from the Hewlett Foundation last month. "I have never considered this to be espionage."
The FBI's counterespionage was incorporated into the investigation of the special advocate Robert Mueller, who has recently ended. Mueller said in his report that his team could not establish a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, but did not comment on whether Trump was obstructing justice. Barr stated that he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had determined that there was no conclusive evidence to establish that a traffic disruption crime had taken place, but Democrats claimed that Mueller had left the issue open to Congress for it to investigate and decide.
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