A member of the Trump administration told Fox News’ Gregg Re on Tuesday that Attorney General William Barr has assembled a team to investigate the origins of the Obama administration’s FBI counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election.
During a congressional hearing on Tuesday, Barr said: “I am reviewing the conduct of the investigation and trying to get my arms around all the aspects of the counterintelligence investigation that was conducted during the summer of 2016.”
Barr’s testimony came after he sent a letter to Congress in late March that revealed that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Fox News also exclusively reported that “the Justice Department’s Inspector General (IG) is separately looking into whether Comey mishandled classified information by including a variety of sensitive matters in his private memos” and is also looking into “the FBI’s FISA application process.”
The FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign was opened in July 2016 by disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok, who was fired last year over communications he had with his lover, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, in which he expressed his hatred of Trump and desire for Hillary Clinton to win.
One particular text message from Strzok to Page, dated August 15, 2016, raised significant concern when it was released in 2017.
Strzok texted Page: “I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in [deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe’s] office that there’s no way he gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40…”
Regarding that text message, Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro wrote: “This looks an awful lot like motivation for launching an investigation into Trump in order to sink Trump as a hedge against Trump’s victory. The FBI’s investigation into Russian governmental interference in the election began in July 2016, just weeks before Strzok’s text message.”
Last Month, Fox News reported that transcripts that Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee released from last year’s closed-door interview with Page show that she “essentially confirmed” that the Russia investigation was the “insurance policy” that Strzok texted her about.
Page said in her testimony that investigators only had a “paucity” of evidence when the investigation launched.
CBS News reported that the “issue is likely to get more attention Wednesday when Barr appears for his second day of testimony before Congress this week, this time before a Republican-led panel in the Senate.”
The Daily Caller noted that the DOJ inspector general Michael Horowitz has “inquired about Halper, a former Cambridge University professor who has been identified in the press as a longtime FBI and CIA informant.”
“Halper, who worked in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations, made contact during the 2016 campaign with Trump aides Carter Page, Sam Clovis and George Papadopoulos,” The Caller added. “He was identified as a government informant by the Times and The Washington Post in May 2018.”
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