(CNN) President Donald Trump met with Attorney General William Barr and White House counsel Pat Cipollone in an Oval Office meeting Thursday afternoon in which the so-called Horowitz report came up in conversation, two sources told CNN.

The animated discussions were captured by TV crews outside the Oval Office on the South Lawn of the White House awaiting the President's departure for Louisiana. Trump held a campaign rally in Louisiana ahead of Saturday's gubernatorial election in that state.

The Horowitz report refers to a probe by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz on the opening of the Russia investigation. Horowitz's office is expected to wrap up its investigation soon.

Horowitz began his investigation in early 2018, centered on the applications submitted by the FBI in 2016 and 2017 to a secretive surveillance court seeking permission to eavesdrop on Carter Page, the Trump campaign foreign policy adviser.

The surveillance warrants, which cite a dossier of unverified intelligence on the Trump campaign collected by former British spy Christopher Steele, have since been released and used by Trump and his allies to stand up allegations that the early investigation into the Trump campaign and Russian interference in the election was driven by politics.

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