Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI, has been demonized by Trump. McCabe’s counsel, Michael Bromwich, said “the review found an ample factual basis for the launching of the Russia investigation.
It also found unanimity – among FBI and DoJ personnel at every level – that the investigation needed to be opened, and that not doing so would have been a dereliction of duty by the FBI.”
The investigation, ultimately taken over by the special counsel Robert Mueller, started in July 2016 after the FBI learned that Papadopoulos, a former Trump aide, had been saying before it was publicly known that Russia possessed dirt on Clinton in the form of hacked emails.
FBI had overstated the significance of Steele’s past work as an informant and left out information about one of Steele’s sources whom Steele called a “boaster” who “may engage in some embellishment”.
The report states: “Steele called the allegation that he was biased against Trump from the start ‘ridiculous’. He stated that if anything he was ‘favorably disposed’ toward
the Trump family before he began his research because he had visited a Trump family member at Trump Tower and ‘been friendly’ with [the family member] for some years.
“He described their relationship as ‘personal’ and said he once gifted a family tartan from Scotland to the family member.The inspector general report comes as 🍊faces an impeachment inquiry in Congress centered on his efforts to have Ukraine investigate a political rival, Biden
Trump ignored the report’s conclusions and reiterated a baseless claim of victim hood.
