Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, said on Sunday that he believes the upcoming Inspector General report on the counterintelligence investigation into Russia and the Trump campaign is going to be damning evidence of wrongdoing by FBI and Justice Department officials and could lead to a full-fledged criminal investigation.
“It doesn’t take 500 pages to tell the inspector general that everything was done properly,” Ratcliffe said during an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.” “The IG report is going to find that there were problems.”
For more than a year and a half, Inspector General Michael Horowitz has been investigating alleged misconduct related to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, warrants delivered by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). The Justice Department and FBI obtained warrants in 2016 to surveil Trump adviser Carter Page. It is unclear, at this point, if Page was the only Trump official that the DOJ obtained a FISA warrant against.
That highly anticipated report will likely spark new congressional investigations and deliver critical information to other federal reviews probing allegations of abuse by the Justice Department and the FBI.
Horowitz submitted in September a draft of his report to Attorney General Bill Barr, who was reviewing the document — fueling the belief that the public release was coming soon. – READ MORE