President Donald Trump and his allies spent almost three years denouncing the Russia investigation as a sham. They claimed it was part of a political vendetta by angry Democrats and disaffected bureaucrats. They accused the FBI agents who conducted the initial inquiry of committing treason and organizing a coup. Fox News and other Trump-aligned outlets hyped nefarious allegations night after night after night, and top Republican lawmakers devoted untold amounts of energy to investigating them.

Some in Trumpworld hoped that Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department’s inspector general, would lend credibility to their conspiracy theories on Monday, when he released his review of how the FBI became involved in investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. Those hopes were somewhat misplaced. In the 473-page report, Horowitz found evidence of serious flaws in the process to obtain foreign-surveillance warrants targeting former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in 2016 and 2017. He also faulted FBI officials for giving too much credence to British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s dossier of allegations against Trump.

But Horowitz, who had sweeping access to Justice Department and FBI records and personnel, also demolished one conspiracy theory after another about the inquiry. He concluded that the investigation was justified, that there was no evidence that political bias had affected its course, and that the FBI did not embed spies in Trump’s presidential election campaign. None of this will deter Trump and his allies from claiming there was a plot against him all along. If anything, it will strengthen their resolve to prove it.

Trump ignited a firestorm way back in March 2017 when he accused the Obama administration of wiretapping Trump Tower during the campaign. Since then, he’s often claimed that Democrats spied on him and his campaign—an assertion echoed earlier this year by Attorney General Bill Barr. Reports that the FBI used confidential informants to interact with campaign officials also led some of Trump’s allies to accuse the bureau of planting moles with a domestic political campaign—an awkward and disturbing allegation, given the bureau’s troubled track record on that front.

Horowitz found no basis for those claims. “We found no evidence that the FBI used [informants] or [undercover agents] to interact with members of the Trump campaign prior to the opening of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” he wrote. “After the opening of the investigation, we found no evidence that the FBI placed any [informants or undercover agents] within the Trump campaign or tasked any [informants or undercover agents] to report on the Trump campaign. Finally, we also found no documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivations influenced the FBI’s decision to use [informants or undercover agents] to interact with Trump campaign officials in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.” That just about covers all the bases.

