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Trump hits back at IG’s Russia probe report: ‘An embarassment’

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Michael Horowitz drops a 400-page verdict on the Russia probe, and Trump isn’t having any of it.

The Justice Department’s inspector general spent nearly two years digging through the origins of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation, and on December 9, 2019, he finally released his findings. Within hours, President Trump was in front of cameras at the White House calling the report “an embarrassment” and insisting it exposed an “attempted overthrow” of the U.S. government. The reaction set off a scramble inside his own Justice Department, with Attorney General William Barr publicly breaking from Horowitz’s central conclusion.

• Horowitz’s report found the FBI had a legally sound basis to open the Russia investigation, with no evidence the decision was driven by political bias.
• The inspector general identified at least 17 significant errors and omissions across four FISA applications used to wiretap Carter Page, including reliance on Christopher Steele’s unverified dossier.
• Attorney General Barr disputed Horowitz’s core finding, saying the FBI acted on the “thinnest of suspicions” while FBI Director Christopher Wray ordered more than 40 corrective actions.

The Report’s Core Findings

Horowitz’s review concluded that the FBI was within its authority to open Crossfire Hurricane in July 2016, and his team found no documentary or testimonial evidence that anti-Trump bias among agents drove the decision to launch the probe. That finding alone undercut years of claims from the president that the entire investigation was a “hoax” cooked up by his political enemies inside the bureau.

But the report was far from a clean bill of health for the FBI. Horowitz flagged at least 17 significant errors and omissions spread across the four FISA applications the bureau used to surveil former campaign adviser Carter Page. Investigators leaned heavily on Christopher Steele’s unverified dossier and never told the surveillance court that Page had previously served as a CIA contact — details that, according to the report, should have been disclosed before any wiretap was approved.

Trump’s Response From the White House

Trump didn’t wait long to react. Standing before reporters, he framed the findings as vindication of everything he’d said for three years about a “deep state” conspiracy against his campaign, calling the report’s revelations “far worse” than he had expected and describing them as documenting an “attempted overthrow” of the government.

An embarrassment to our country.

That line captured the president’s overall message: that the errors Horowitz catalogued in the FISA process were proof of a rigged system aimed squarely at sabotaging his campaign and, later, his presidency. He tied the report directly into his long-running “witch hunt” framing, arguing the FISA missteps validated his broader complaints about how the investigation began and how it was run.

A Split Inside the Justice Department

The most striking wrinkle wasn’t Trump’s reaction — it was the daylight between Horowitz and his own boss. Attorney General William Barr publicly disputed the inspector general’s conclusion that the investigation had sufficient justification, stating flatly that the FBI acted on the “thinnest of suspicions” and misled the FISA court in the process.

FBI Director Christopher Wray took a different approach. He accepted the report’s findings outright, ordering more than 40 corrective actions to overhaul the FISA application process and how the bureau vets and handles confidential sources. Wray also pointed out that the report found no evidence the investigation itself was launched for improper political reasons, even as he acknowledged the errors that led to the corrective measures. For more on how this story is developing, follow the latest political coverage as the fallout continues.

Future Strategic Initiatives and Outlook

The report’s release didn’t happen in a vacuum. It landed the same week House Democrats were pressing forward with their impeachment inquiry into Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, giving the president a fresh talking point to argue he’d been targeted before and was being targeted again. Expect Barr’s public disagreement with Horowitz, paired with Wray’s 40-plus corrective actions, to shape how Capitol Hill hearings on the FISA process unfold in the weeks ahead — keep tabs on how it plays out via ongoing national coverage.

Horowitz himself is expected to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Republicans will likely zero in on the 17 FISA errors while Democrats point back to his finding that the investigation was properly opened. Both sides now have a 400-page document to cite — they’re just reading very different chapters of it.