The FBI should have reassessed whether to continue surveilling Trump campaign aide Carter Page after learning allegations he was a Russian spy might not be credible, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz said Wednesday.
Mr. Horowitz said FBI officials should have considered ending the surveillance of Mr. Page in January 2017 after no evidence of wrongdoing turned up. Instead, the bureau continued to monitor him until September 2017.
“If you are getting information that isn’t advancing, and in fact, potentially undercutting, or simply undercutting your primary theme or theory as was happening here… you’d look at the Carter Page file and say, should I keep going on this?”
Testifying before the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, Mr. Horowitz discussed his report, released last week, on the FBI’s Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Application to monitor Mr. Page.
Concluding the investigation was justified, Mr. Horowitz also uncovered more than 17 missteps in the application. He said agents omitted critical information that undercut the allegations against Mr. Page.
Mr. Horowitz said agents pushed forward the Page investigation, even after they failed to uncover evidence of crime. He said, instead, they should have reevaluated a probe that isn’t fruitful.
“We’ve got agents talking with one another about why Page is even a subject anymore,” he said.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
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