A former FBI general counsel said President Trump should apologize to him and others at the bureau after a Department of Justice (DOJ) watchdog report disputed the president’s accusations that his campaign was investigated due to a political bias.
“I think the president should apologize to us,” James Baker told CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Monday night. “I respectfully ask him, I would ask him to apologize to me, to my colleagues, because the things he said are just wrong. And I think he should step up and do that at a minimum.”
Baker said the conclusions of DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report, released earlier Monday, “are quite clear that the president’s statements over these past several years were all wrong.”
“That there was no hoax, there was no conspiracy to overthrow anybody, there was no sedition, there was no treason, there was no evidence of any of that,” he said.
The watchdog report states “we did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions to open the four individual investigations,” referring to investigations into four people on the Trump campaign: George Papadopoulos, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort and Carter Page.
The nearly 500-page report, however, was critical of certain aspects of the FBI’s handling of the investigation.
Trump did not back down from his accusations after the report was released, and said the FBI attempted “an overthrow of government.”
Attorney General William Barr similarly said in a statement after the report was released that the FBI had an “insufficient” basis to justify the steps taken.
Horowitz is slated to testify publicly Wednesday at a Senate panel about the FBI’s Russia probe.