The Justice Department inspector general's office found that the FBI did not try to recruit members of the Trump campaign as informants, and did not to try infiltrate the campaign itself — either by instructing sources to get hired onto the campaign, or by sending sources into campaign spaces to collect information.

One early source that proved helpful to the FBI had actually been offered a position on the Trump campaign by former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, but the FBI was not aware of that when they approached the source, and the source never took the campaign job.

In fact, FBI officials involved in the investigation were unanimous in their belief that they would not use the source if the source had wanted to take a role on the campaign, according to the report.

"No, no, no, no, no, no .... [O]h god no. Absolutely not," was former FBI agent Peter Strzok’s reaction to the news that the source had a job offer pending, the former senior counterintelligence agent told the IG’s office.

The source eventually met with Page, former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, and a high-level campaign official who was not a subject of the investigation, on behalf of the FBI.

Part of the source’s conversation with Page, in which Page responded cryptically when asked about a potential “October surprise,” eventually made its way into one of the renewal applications for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act surveillance.

In another meeting with the source, Page joked that he’d like have an “open checkbook” from the Russians if he were to follow through with a plan to found a think tank in line with his friendly views on the country. That line too made it into the FISA applications, and caused some in the FBI to believe that Page could be acting as a Russian agent.