WASHINGTON (AP) — Bungled applications to eavesdrop on a former aide of then-candidate Donald Trump. Flawed research by a former British spy tasked with a sensitive, and political, assignment. And an FBI scrambling against the election-season clock to untangle suspicions about foreign government collusion that it feared could have grave national security implications.
…The findings aren’t flattering for the FBI, with Durham asserting that it rushed into the investigation without an adequate basis and routinely ignored or rationalized evidence that undercut its premise. The report catalogs a series of errors — though many were already documented years ago by a separate Justice Department inspector general report, and the FBI says it’s taken several dozen corrective steps on its own.
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The report contends that the FBI fell prone to “confirmation bias,” repeatedly ignoring, minimizing or rationalizing away evidence that undercut the premise of collusion, including a conversation in which Papadopoulos vigorously denied knowing about any cooperative relationship between Russia and the Trump campaign.
It also says investigators did not corroborate a “single substantive allegation” in a dossier of Democratic-funded research that was compiled by a former British spy, Christopher Steele, and yet continued to cite it in applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to eavesdrop on a former Trump campaign aide, Carter Page.
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Article URL : https://apnews.com/article/durham-report-fbi-trump-clinton-2016-campaign-f3039e651eeb35a09091c363419e6766