No evidence of undercover FBI agents in Trump's 2016 campaign, DOJ inspector expected to announce

(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

published 27 November 2019

Another reveal from the Justice Department's internal watchdog adds to the speculation that Trump likely won't get the boost he was looking for from a report into the department's 2016 Russian election interference investigation.

Reports from last week already revealed that Inspector General Michael Horowitz was not expected to find that political bias hindered the investigation as Trump has often argued. Now, The New York Times is additionally reporting that the inspector general didn't find evidence that the FBI attempted to place undercover agents or informants inside Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, which is another theory posed by the president.

The report apparently isn't final yet, so a lot could change, but it doesn't sound as if Horowitz found much backing up Trump's claims. Still, he's not expected to let the Justice Department off the hook — the report is expected to criticize FBI leaders for their handling of certain aspects of the investigation, including how they went about pursuing a wiretap of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page (though there was reportedly legal basis for the wiretap itself). Read more at The New York Times.

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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.

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