Senator Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) on Capitol Hill, March 25, 2019 (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) confirmed that a Justice Department report detailing the FBI’s surveillance against the Trump campaign will be released on December 9, two days before Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz will testify before the committee.

“I look forward to reviewing the report and hearing Mr. Horowitz’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he will deliver a detailed account of what he found regarding his investigation, along with recommendations as to how to make our judicial and investigative systems better,” a statement from Graham’s office reads. Graham first revealed the news in an appearance on Fox News’ Hannity.

The report, first announced by Horowitz in March 2018, will examine whether the FBI deliberately deceived the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to get warrants to secretly spy on former Trump adviser Carter Page, after concerns over news that the now-discredited Steele dossier was used in the FBI’s FISA application.


Horowitz’s work is independent of the DOJ’s administrative probe into the origins of the Russia investigation, which was upgraded to a criminal inquiry last month.


During a Senate hearing in April on the Mueller investigation, which did not find sufficient evidence to charge President Trump with collusion with Russia, Attorney General William Barr stated that he believed “spying did occur” during the original FBI probe, and that he would investigate whether those FBI and Department of Justice officials misled the FISA court to surveil Trump’s campaign.

In October, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruled that the FBI’s foreign surveillance program is unconstitutional, after reports showed that the program collected the personal information of American citizens along with the foreign targets of the surveillance.

In one case revealed in the ruling, an FBI official used a database to search for information on himself, his relatives and other FBI personnel.

Editor’s Note: This piece originally misidentified Lindsey Graham as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Graham is chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

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