Attorney General Bill Barr said on Monday that the Justice Department is considering establishing a rule requiring the FBI to obtain his permission before opening an investigation into a presidential campaign.
“[FBI Director] Chris Wray and I have discussed a number of possibilities,” Barr replied when a reporter asked if his department was planning on changing the FBI’s process of launching probes into political campaigns.
“One of the things that we have agreed on is that the opening of a counterintelligence investigation of a presidential campaign would be something that the director of the FBI would have to sign off on, and the attorney general would have to sign off on,” he said.
Barr has boosted President Donald Trump’s accusation that the FBI opened the Trump-Russia probe out of bias against him, even after DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz thoroughly debunked that conspiracy theory in his report in December.
However, Wray backed Horowitz’s report when it was published, saying he and his agency “fully accept its findings and recommendations.”
