Barr Stands Firm: Trump Campaign 'Was Clearly Spied Upon' by FBI
Attorney General William Barr is standing by his assessment that President Donald Trump’s campaign was spied on by the Obama administration during the 2016 election.
“It was clearly spied upon,” Barr told NBC News reporter Peter Williams in an interview that aired Tuesday, the day after the release of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation into the Trump campaign.
“That’s what electronic surveillance is. I think wiring people up to go in and talk to people and make recordings of their conversations is spying. I think going through people’s emails, which they did as a result of the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] warrant.”
“Do you still stand by your statement that the [Trump] campaign was spied upon?”
AG Bill Barr: “It was clearly spied upon.”
pic.twitter.com/AZ4yLNZc5r— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) December 10, 2019
Williams asked Barr why the FBI should not have opened an investigation if it had any suspicion of wrongdoing by the Trump campaign, even if the evidence was not strong.
“From a civil liberties standpoint, the greatest danger to our free system is that the incumbent government use the apparatus of the state — principally the law enforcement agencies and the intelligence agencies — both to spy on political opponents, but also to use them in a way that could affect the outcome of the election,” Barr responded.
The attorney general explained that to his knowledge, it was the first time in U.S. history such action has been taken in a presidential campaign.
Barr noted that members of presidential campaign staff and other advisers are often in communication with individuals from other countries during the course of a race, so that mere fact is not enough to properly predicate an investigation.
“We don’t automatically assume that the campaigns are nefarious and traitors and acting in league with foreign powers,” he said. “There has to be some basis before we use these very potent powers in our core First Amendment activity.”
In this instance, Barr found the justification used to spy on the Trump campaign to be “very flimsy.”
Barr pointed out former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators found no evidence of Trump campaign members colluding with Russia.
“There was and never has been any evidence of collusion and yet this campaign and the president’s administration has been dominated by this investigation into what turns out to be completely baseless,” he said.
Barr told Williams he has tasked U.S. Attorney John Durham with looking into not only how Crossfire Hurricane was launched, but why the investigation of Trump officials continued after the election, given the fact that no evidence of collusion was unearthed after months of probing.
“What was the agenda after the election that kept them pressing ahead after their case collapsed?” Barr said he wants to know. “This is the president of the United States.”
During congressional testimony in April, Barr, who had recently been confirmed as attorney general, made headlines when he described the FBI’s conduct during the 2016 race as “spying.“
At the time, Democrats, including Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, countered that the FBI was engaged in “authorized” surveillance.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.
