I want to tone things down a little bit here and First Express my gratitude for the thousands of men and women who work every day on the front line with the fbi. I come from a background as a prosecutor and our local Law Enforcement work with the fbi every day in our local office in minnesota, and then in the senate, ive had the privilege to work with many, many people in the fbi. And i think the Inspector General hes job is incredibly important. He keeps everyone honest. But i do think this it is important for those t agents an those in Law Enforcement that are watching today that people understand there are people up here that understand that you are simply doing your jobs. Which i think is basically some recommendations Foric Change Wh the Inspector General found in this report. So before iis start my question
i think that it is important to put this discussion in context in the 2016 election which is why we are here today. It is nowe undisputed by our Intelligence Agencies that rus
correct. and correct in thinking that the steele dossier was paid for by the dnc? the clinton campaign or the dnc. it was ultimately learned by the fbi that that was the case. or that came to be their belief. and then so we s do i disi s doier, it is fed to the fbi, and there are outrightdo fabrication of evidence in the fisa applications. and then not only does the fbi get a surveillance program ongoing, but they also get the dnc also gets news stories written during the campaign about the surveillance program. in september of 2016, there is a story about possible counterintelligence investigation of the trump campaign.
be checking the work of the people who are doing the work andho there are a whole bunch o provisions that were violated throughout this. but bruce ohr, he ultimately decides to get stwextra informan out of drchristopher steele aft steele or his employ fusion gps had been cut off by the fbi. why did the fbi decide to no loaning listen to chrisser to steele? he was lowed in november of 20167 after the fbi learned of his disclosure to mother joness magazine that he ahead been working with the fbi previously. and we know from the evidence senator cruz went through, there were a bunch of sub sources that steele was summarizing and the fbi was believing that he might be a credible guy and they ultimately realized this is a bunch of bs and his sub sources are saying i said some of this in jest and some of it is what i heard in a bar, none is firsthand knowledge. and so the fbi decides
laid out here in this report. is there any evidence that you found that the fbi tried to overthrow the president city? no, we found the issues that we identified here. did you find any evidence that the fbi tried to entrap anyone? . as a legal matter since we didn t see any actual cases coming out of this ut there was no entrapment. correct. did you find any evidence that the fbi tapped the phones at trump tower? no. the only wiretapping 46 or the only surveillance is what is laid out here. did you find any evidence that the fbi planted informants in the trump campaign . did you find any evidence that the fbi tried specifically to entrap any of the individuals
that time do you agree with attorney general barr that the investigation was predicated on the thinnest of suspicions? iin won t get into a comparin of his view. he is free to have his opinion. we have our finding and as i said, i stand by our conclusion. and your conclusion that it was sufficient presented indication to open the investigation based on the low threshold required by department and fbi policy. . thank you very much. we ve talked a lot about page. just briefly when papadopoulous. i don t want anybody to believe that anybody namedul in the initial investigation has been convicted of being an a little of the russians. has anybody associated with the trump campaign been charged with a crime colluding with russians? not that i knowg of as i si here. i d think we d know by though. mr. papadopoulous was being surveilled by the fbi 1245r, is correct? the confidential human yourself? yes, they did see operations