Conflicting signals surround the classification review for the Justice Department inspector general’s report on alleged Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuses.
A month after Inspector General Michael Horowitz completed his investigation, there are signs that the declassification process is taking longer than expected at the Justice Department and the FBI, and that has made some Trump allies nervous.
Last weekend, Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo announced that her sources were telling her it would be released Friday. But by Monday, Bartiromo updated her report, tweeting, “IG report NOT out this Friday 10/18. Classifications being made. Likely end of month.”
Her colleague at Fox Business, Lou Dobbs, who has long complained of the moving “goal posts” for the release of the FISA report, was irritated by the delay. “We now are told by apparently reliable sources that it’s to be delayed. God knows why,” he said on his show Wednesday.
Republican allies of President Trump are eager for the report’s release as they believe it will show top Justice Department and FBI officials improperly targeted the Trump team by misleading the FISA court in using an unverified dossier compiled by British ex-spy Christopher Steele to obtain warrants to electronically monitor onetime Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Some have even predicted that the four FISA warrants against Page were illegally obtained and have demanded accountability.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Trump noted that the release of the FISA report is “coming out soon” and will shed light on a “corrupt election.” Trump said he believes the string of misconduct “goes right up” to his predecessor, former President Barack Obama.
Democrats have dismissed the allegations of wrongdoing during the Trump-Russia investigation and are concerned that U.S. Attorney John Durham’s review of the early stages of the Russia investigation, being overseen by Attorney General William Barr, may be an effort to discredit the work of special counsel Robert Mueller.
Little is known about what the report will say, let alone what is going on behind the scenes at the Justice Department and the FBI. A DOJ official who spoke with Fox News disputed there being a tumultuous debate over redactions. “The FBI and the DOJ are working together smoothly on the declassification process,” the official said.
But former Republican Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz, now a Fox News contributor, posited a more skeptical explanation for why there appears to have been a delay that may infuriate Trump’s supporters.
“Evidently, there’s an intra-agency debate and really a food fight if you will about the classification issues,” Chaffetz said on Sean Hannity’s show on Monday. “Remember in the last report put out by Horowitz, there were only seven words or so that were redacted. The Democrats threw a fit that they couldn’t see the whole thing. This could have 10-20% of the report redacted.”
Chaffetz also said he has not seen any evidence to suggest FBI Director Christopher Wray has been “cooperative” and speculated that former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper may be involved in “behind-the-scenes fighting” as they are also “fighting” to defend themselves on TV.
On Wednesday, former U.S. Attorney Joe diGenova, a vocal Trump defender, echoed a similar sentiment about Wray in an interview with Dobbs. “Apparently, it’s again the whole issue of declassification,” he said. “Apparently, the FBI is fighting the declassification of certain parts of the report.”
Wray, who was nominated by Trump to succeed fired FBI Director James Comey, has been subject to GOP suspicion ever since he disputed Attorney General William Barr’s use of the word “spying” to describe the government surveillance of Trump’s 2016 campaign. For instance, John Sununu, the former governor of New Hampshire and White House chief of staff for President George H.W. Bush, said in August that Wray has been “co-opted by the FBI bureaucracy” and would try to cover up the FISA report.
Despite GOP consternation, Barr has been supportive of Wray.
Another possible reason for the long classification review of Horowitz’s report by the DOJ and the FBI is its length. In his letter to Congress last month announcing the completion of his investigation, Horowitz said his “team has reviewed over one million records and conducted over 100 interviews.” He also offered some insight into why his inquiry took longer than expected, noting that several witnesses “only recently agreed to be interviewed.”
Bartiromo said she heard the draft that Horowitz submitted to the DOJ and the FBI was as “thick as a telephone book” and covers “more than just FISA abuse.”
Upon the completion of the classification process, the report will be returned to Horowitz. Even then, the report may not be released right away. In his letter, the inspector general said his team will then “proceed with our usual process for preparing final draft public and classified reports, and ensuring that appropriate reviews occur for accuracy and comment purposes.”
When their work is done, the report, with redactions, will be delivered to Congress. It will go immediately to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, who has pledged to do a “deep dive” of his own into alleged FISA abuse that will run concurrently with U.S. Attorney John Durham’s review of the early stages of the Russia investigation. The South Carolina Republican said his “No. 1 goal” is to have as much of the report declassified as possible.
A clash on Capitol Hill is shaping up once the report is released to the public, with Democrats laying the groundwork to discredit the government watchdog’s findings as “tainted” by politics. In a recent hearing on FISA, House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, a New York Democrat, dismissed allegations of FISA-related wrongdoing, saying, “I’m not aware of any terrible problem with the FISA court and specifically not with the Carter Page application.”
U.S. District Judge John Bates, who was the presiding judge of the FISA court from 2009 to 2013, said recently he expects the report from Horowitz to be “very fair” and “pretty lengthy.”
