On Monday, during NBC News breaking new following the release of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report, justice correspondent Pete Williams said Horowitz found that the FBI “screwed up at every level.”
Williams said the inspector general found, “The FBI failed to document to the court assertions in the FISA application that undercut Steele’s credibility.”
He continued, “Even though the FBI got information that would raise questions about the credibility of Steele, it failed to reassess its own reliance on him, failed to tell the FISA court about these problems, and didn’t press him on the source of his information. Nonetheless, it says it found no political bias in seeking the FISA warrant on Page. What it says is the FBI basically repeatedly screwed up at every level, failing to pay enough attention to potential problems with Steele and failing to tell the Justice Department.”
He added, “The IG report says the FISA application was inaccurate, incomplete, or unsupported. It says, for example, that the FBI failed to look at some of the problems in Steele’s past work, but that was never sufficiently addressed.”
He concluded, “The inspector general is so concerned about these problems that if the FBI so mishandled this application for an investigation into a candidate for president, then how is it doing it for garden variety people who are subject to these warrants? And for that reason, we learned today the inspector general is now opening a new investigation on how the FBI gets these warrants on American citizens.”
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