Byron York:
“…The proof is in the details of the report. In addition to the much-discussed wiretap of Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page, Horowitz discussed the bureau’s use of what is called a CHS — a confidential human source, or, in more common terms, an informant, and a UCE — an undercover employee, or a secret agent, to gather information from at least three targets in the Trump campaign. One was Page, another was George Papadopoulos, also a member of the advisory team, and the third was an unnamed “high-level Trump campaign official who was not a subject of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.”
Horowitz described “multiple CHS operations undertaken by the Crossfire Hurricane team.” There were “numerous CHS interactions with Page and Papadopoulos.” There was the CHS contact with the high-level campaign official. And then there were “additional CHSs” who attempted to contact Papadopoulos but did not succeed.
All the meetings and conversations were secretly recorded by the FBI. Some were also monitored live, as they happened, by agents and supervisors. The Horowitz report quoted liberally from transcripts of the recordings…
…In short, the FBI, acting under false pretenses, spied on Trump and Flynn in plain sight.
The Horowitz report noted the potentially corrosive effect of what the FBI did. “We concluded that the FBI’s use of this briefing for investigative reasons could potentially interfere with the expectation of trust and good faith among participants in strategic intelligence briefings, thereby frustrating their purpose,” the report said.
Put it all together, and there was a lot of spying on the Trump campaign — by confidential informants, in a wiretap, even in a supposed intelligence briefing. Yet defenders of the Trump-Russia probe still maintain that no spying took place and that the FBI followed proper procedures. After Horowitz, that’s a difficult case to make. The fact is, the FBI not only spied on the Trump campaign, it did it in the worst way…”