An assessment from the DOJ watchdog found the Trump-Russia investigation was opened on a sound legal footing and was unable to "find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced" the genesis of that investigation.
"We even did a word search for 'bias' but didn't find any exact references"
But Horowitz, who released a report on Monday regarding the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into the Trump team, distinguished between the opening of the inquiry in late July 2016 and the investigatory actions related to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that followed.
"We asked all the witnesses ‐ not just him ‐ as to whether bias or other improper considerations had any impact, but we also looked for emails, text messages, documents that could show what we found, frankly, with Strzok and Page," Horowitz said while answering a line of questioning by Idaho Republican Sen. Mike Crapo during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday.
Horowitz was referring to Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, former FBI officials who were part of the Russia investigation before being removed due to the discovery of anti-Trump text messages that the inspector general found in a prior investigation. One revelation in Horowitz's latest report is that Strzok was involved in the decision to initiate the counterintelligence investigation, but it was his superior, Bill Priestap, the assistant director of the FBI Counterintelligence Division, who made the actual authorization.
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