Attorney General William Barr says official statements about the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation “are just not jiving” with information he has learned during his short stint in office.
“I assumed I’d get answers when I went in and I have not gotten answers that are well satisfactory, and in fact probably have more questions,” Barr said in an interview with CBS News, adding that “some of the facts that … I’ve learned don’t hang together with the official explanations of what happened.”
“[T]here’s some questions that I think have to be answered, and I have a basis for feeling there has to be a review of this,” he told CBS.
Barr is investigating government agencies’ surveillance activities against the Trump campaign, as well as the FBI’s rationale for opening a counterintelligence investigation against Trump associates in July 2016.
Barr caused a stir during a Senate hearing on April 9 when he said that he believed “spying did occur” against the Trump campaign. He has since defended using the term “spying,” saying that there is nothing wrong with intelligence agencies spying. But he said he wants to find out whether there was a proper predicate for the surveillance and whether it was conducted legally.
The FBI used at least one informant, Stefan Halper, to make contact with Trump campaign advisers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos. It has also been reported that a woman who presented herself as Halper’s assistant during the Papadopoulos operation was actually a government investigator.
It is still not clear which agency employed the investigator, who went by the alias Azra Turk. Barr is also looking into the FBI’s use of the infamous and unverified Steele dossier to obtain surveillance warrants against Carter Page.
Barr appointed U.S. Attorney John Durham to lead his investigation. President Trump granted Barr the authority to declassify materials he obtains during the investigation.
Barr suggested that one area he is looking at is the timeline of government agencies’ interest in the Trump campaign.
“Things are just not jiving,” he told CBS.
Current and former FBI officials have claimed that the bureau’s counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign began on July 31, 2016, after receiving a tip from the Australian government regarding Papadopoulos.
But as The Daily Caller News Foundation first reported, Halper, the FBI informant, established contact with Carter Page three weeks before the counterintelligence investigation officially opened.
Here is a partial transcript of Barr’s remarks, from CBS News:
