Crossfire Hurricane (FBI investigation)

Crossfire Hurricane (FBI investigation)

Crossfire Hurricane was the code name for the counterintelligence investigation undertaken by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2016 and 2017. The investigation was officially opened on July 31, 2016, initially due to information on Trump campaign member George Papadopoulos’s early assertions of Russians having damaging material on Hillary Clinton. Trump and his allies repeatedly promoted conspiracy theories asserting that the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was opened on false pretenses for political purposes. A subsequent review done by Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz did not find political bias in the initiation of the FBI investigation.

About Crossfire Hurricane (FBI investigation) in brief

Summary Crossfire Hurricane (FBI investigation)Crossfire Hurricane was the code name for the counterintelligence investigation undertaken by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2016 and 2017. The investigation was officially opened on July 31, 2016, initially due to information on Trump campaign member George Papadopoulos’s early assertions of Russians having damaging material on Hillary Clinton. Trump and his allies repeatedly promoted conspiracy theories asserting that the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was opened on false pretenses for political purposes. A subsequent review done by Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz, released in redacted form in December 2019, did not find political bias in the initiation of the FBI investigation. The Inspector General also determined that the FBI made 17 errors or omissions in its FISA warrant applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for surveillance of Trump aide Carter Page. The FBI’s work was taken over on May 17, 2017, by the Special Counsel investigation of 2017–2019, which eventually resulted in the Mueller Report. Mueller concluded that Russian interference occurred in a’sweeping and systematic fashion’ and that there were substantial links with the Trump campaign. But the evidence available to investigators did not establish that theTrump campaign hadconspired or coordinated with the Russian government. In late July 2016, according to his May 2017 testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, CIA director John Brennan convened a group of officials from the CIA, NSA, and FBI to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. According to his later testimony, Brennan gave the FBI leads involving the interactions between Russian officials and U. S. persons involved in the campaign. In March 2017, FBI Director James Comey confirmed that the probe included links between Trump campaign members and Russian officials.

He said the FBI had been investigating Russian interference as part of its counterintelligence mission. He confirmed that there was no evidence of collusion between the campaign and the Russians, but the FBI was further investigating further links between the two sides. In May 2017, the FBI confirmed that it was investigating links between members of the campaign, Russian officials, and members of Congress. In July 2017, CIA Director John Brennan described this group effort as a ‘fusion cell’ The FBI confirmed in March 2017 that there had been contacts between the FBI, NSA and the CIA that were beyond the CIA’s mandate to pursue this information as the basis for the investigation to determine whether such collusion occurred. In August 2017, a senior FBI official said that the investigation was still ongoing and that it would not be able to determine if there was any collusion between Russia and the Trump presidential campaign. This is the first time the FBI has publicly acknowledged that it had been involved in any way with the investigation into links between Russian government officials and the Donald Trump presidential election campaign. It is also the first public acknowledgment of the existence of a joint effort between the CIA and NSA to investigate the Russian meddling in the presidential election with the FBI and the National Security Agency. In November 2016, the CIA director said that he had been briefed by the NSA on the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference. The CIA director also said in a July 2017 interview that he was aware that the NSA and FBI were looking into the possibility of a possible link between the Kremlin and Trump campaign associates.