Kevin McCarthy Spins Horowitz Report to Claim FBI ‘Spied’ on Trump’s 2016 Campaign

As Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) blasted Democrats for their articles of impeachment against Donald Trump, he twice pushed forward the insinuation that the president’s 2016 campaign was illicitly “spied” upon. This comes after Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz punched a massive hole in that claim with his findings that the Russia investigation was legitimate.

McCarthy devoted most of his remarks to slamming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, saying Trump “did nothing that’s impeachable” and promising Democrats “history will not be kind to them” for charging the president with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. At two points during his comments, McCarthy invoked the Horowitz report and held it up as proof that the FBI “spied” on Trump’s team.

“You had an inspector general give you a report yesterday to show that a law enforcement agency spied on a presidential campaign, and when they couldn’t get their own facts, they changed it to go to a secret court in FISA to try to spy further. They based that all on something that the Democratic Party spent money on that was a lie to try to discredit somebody running for office.”

Undoubtedly, McCarthy was referring to the parts of Horowitz’s report in which he outlined numerous “significant errors” with how the FBI conducted the investigation of several members of the Trump campaign. These errors were especially prevalent in the application for a FISA warrant to conduct surveillance on Carter Page.

What McCarthy declined to note, however, was that Horowitz also found that there was a legitimate basis to launch the investigation, that there was no evidence the FBI improperly surveilled the campaign with undercover agents, and that political bias did not corrupt the actions of the FBI’s leaders. Horowitz also said the infamous Christopher Steele dossier “played no role” when investigators initially opened the probe.

While Trump and Attorney General William Barr have both run with the same argument as McCarthy that the campaign was “spied” on, the Horowitz report seems to largely characterize the probe as lawful (albeit flawed) surveillance, not as spying with all of the illegal, hostile connotations that go with the term.

Watch above, via C-SPAN