Eli Lake, Columnist

Focus on the Leaking, Not Just the Spying

Ask not only how the FBI got interested in the Trump campaign, but also how its investigation became public.

April 11, 2019 at 10:00 AM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

Yes, there was spying.
Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

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Attorney General William Barr thinks that U.S. intelligence agencies spied on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, he told the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday. And as Bloomberg News reported Tuesday, he has assembled a team to review the matter.

He does not know if the spying was improper, Barr emphasized. “The question is whether it was adequately predicated,” he said. He later clarified that he does not think the FBI itself is corrupt. Nonetheless, Barr said, “spying on a political campaign is a big deal.”