It’s unclear what the attorney general meant by
During his second consecutive day of testimony on Capitol Hill, Attorney General William Barr made new revelations that he believed “spying did occur” on the 2016 Trump campaign and that he would be investigating whether it was done so illegally. The claim prompted Republicans to say such a probe was long overdue while Democrats labeled it a “debunked conspiracy theory.”
“I think spying did occur,” Barr told members of a Senate Appropriations subcommittee. “But the question is whether it was adequality predicated. And I’m not suggesting it wasn’t adequately predicated. But I need to explore that.”
Republicans welcomed the news, who said certain aspects of the recently-concluded Russia investigation long-seemed suspicious, and that there could have been bias against Trump within the FBI and DOJ among those who conducted the investigations. Barr said he’d be “looking into” how the counterintelligence investigation began and make sure there “was no unauthorized surveillance.”
“I think that there is enough smoke that there’s worth looking into,” Republican Senator Susan Collins, a member of the Intelligence Committee, told Newsweek. “But let me make it very clear, I think we needed the Mueller investigation, regardless.”
In addition to more conservative lawmakers and Trump being skeptical of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into alleged Russian collusion with the Trump campaign throughout its 22-month duration, they claimed there was bias at the FBI and that it was a “witch hunt.” Republicans often point to the FISA surveillance warrant issued in October 2016 to surveil former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page as proof. The government did not begin surveilling Page until after he left the campaign, which followed a trip to Moscow, contacts with various Russians and the Steele dossier that contained outlandish allegations about Trump’s links to Russia and was in part funded by Hillary Clinton.
