Spygate — the Russia investigation's origins

Two investigations were established to answer precisely this question, both by officials appointed under a Republican administration.

The Justice Department inspector general, Michael Horowitz, reported in December 2019. On the central question he found the investigation was opened on an authorised basis — a tip relayed by a friendly foreign government about the campaign adviser George Papadopoulos — and that he found no documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias had influenced the decision to open it. The Steele dossier played no role in that opening; it arrived weeks later.

The same report is severe about what followed. It identified seventeen significant errors and omissions in the four FISA applications targeting Carter Page, including reliance on the dossier without disclosing known problems with it. An FBI lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, pleaded guilty in 2020 to altering an email used in that process. Those are real failures, and this entry does not minimise them.

John Durham was then appointed special counsel and worked for four years. He brought three prosecutions: Clinesmith, who pleaded guilty, and Michael Sussmann and Igor Danchenko, both acquitted at trial. His final report in May 2023 was sharply critical of the FBI's confirmation bias and its handling of predication standards, but it charged no conspiracy and produced no evidence of the coordinated plot the theory describes. A four-year investigation with subpoena power that finds no plot is the strongest available test.

The claim's own load-bearing element also fails: the investigation was not disclosed before the 2016 election, while a separate investigation involving the opposing candidate was. Whatever the FBI's failures were, an operation to sabotage the campaign is a poor description of one kept secret until after the vote.