Former foreign minister Alexander Downer played a key role in sparking the 2016 FBI investigation into the Trump campaign and Russia.Credit:Getty Images
While he concludes that the FBI investigation was legitimate and not driven by political bias,Horowitz criticises the FBI’s handling of a wiretap application used in the early stages of the investigation.
The report includes an excerpt from a cable written by Alexander Downer,then Australia's high commissioner to the United Kingdom,after he had drinks with a junior Trump campaign official,George Papadopoulos,in a London bar in May 2016.
Papadopoulos allegedly told Downer that the Russians had obtained damaging information about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
When WikiLeaks started publishing stolen emails from the Clinton campaign,Downer raised his concerns directly with US officials in July 2016.
This information...if true,reasonably indicated activity constituting either a federal crime or a threat to national security,or both,may have occurred or may be occurring.
US Inspector General Michael Horowitz
The Horowitz report makes clear that Downer's intervention was pivotal in the FBI's decision to launch"Operation Crossfire Hurricane",which examined potential links between Trump's campaign and Russia and later morphed into the Mueller investigation.
Andrew McCabe,then the FBI's deputy director,told the inquiry that Downer's information was the"tipping point"that led the FBI to open its investigation.