December 9, 2019

No Evidence of Political Bias in FBI’s Trump-Russia Probe, Justice Department’s Inspector General Finds

The long-awaited report also concluded that the investigation was opened properly.

Kevin Dietsch/ZUMA

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The Justice Department’s inspector general on Monday released a long-awaited report into the origins of the FBI’s Russia investigation. The watchdog report addresses several accusations hurled by President Donald Trump and his Republican allies, including the claim that the FBI abused its authority and improperly spied on the Trump campaign. 

Despite lacking evidence to back those allegations, Trump has frequently used them to distract from the Mueller report as well as the current impeachment investigation. As Mother Jones‘ David Corn noted in May:

For the past two years, Trump’s cultlike Republican handmaids on Capitol Hill and his conservative propagandists in the media have hyped up various deep state conspiracy theories and concocted assorted diversions—purported wiretapping abuses, alleged spying on the Trump campaign, and a supposed FBI vendetta against Trump—to distract from the central narrative of Trump’s deceitful conduct of the 2016 campaign. There have been no congressional hearings that zeroed in on this.

While we dig through the key findings of the inspector general’s report, you can read it in full below:

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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