Michael Horowitz stated in his testimony and through his report on FISA abuse that Barack Obama was probably aware of the counterintelligence investigation of Donald Trump, although I doubt he knew what lengths the FBI was going to in their attempt to enact a coup against President Donald Trump. In one of Lisa Page’s texts to Peter Strzok she said that Obama wanted to be kept up to date on the investigation.
In DOJ IG Michael Horowitz’s report, then-FBI Director James Comey said although Obama did not explicitly ask the FBI to investigate Donald Trump, he did urge the FBI to inform the Trump campaign of the surveillance being conducted through intelligence briefings. The report also says that Comey had reservations about the FISA warrant being sought by Lisa page based on the Steele dossier, but he signed off on it anyway.
The IG report revealed:
Comey told us that he received no requests from the White House to investigate members of the Trump campaign or inquiries about whether the campaign was involved with the efforts by the Russians to interfere in the 2016 U.S. elections.
Comey said that he recalled generally the administration’s interest in what the FBI was doing as a member of the USIC [United States Intelligence Community] to understand and defeat Russia’s efforts to interfere with the elections. In fact, according to [then Crossfire Hurricane Section Chief Peter] Strzok, the White House requested a briefing from the USIC in the fall of 2016 about actions the Russians were taking to interfere in the elections.
…
Comey said [that during a 2016 meeting] he thought it was important that the president know the nature of the FBI’s efforts without providing any specifics. Comey said although he did not recall exactly what he said, he may have said there were four individuals with “some association or connection to the Trump campaign.”
Comey stated that after he provided this information, no one at the meeting responded or followed up with any questions. Comey did not recall specifically when this meeting took place, but believed it may have been in August 2016. We were unable to determine whether this meeting was part of the same meeting reflected in McCabe’s notes discussed above.
The DOJ IG Michael Horowitz’s report added:
The notes [taken by McCabe in July 2016] do not provide any further details about what Obama said regarding defensive briefings, and McCabe told us he did not recall that any further details were provided to him.
However, McCabe said he surmised from his notes that the briefings under discussion were to be given to the Trump campaign [not Hillary Clinton].
That suggests that Obama knew it was Trump who was under suspicion of working with the Russians.
