GOP House Judiciary Disputes Washington Post Fact Check of Trump Speech That Obama ‘Spied’ on Him

The fact-checkers were out in force last night as President Trump gave his acceptance speech for the Republican National Convention from the South Lawn of the White House.

The Washington Post tweeted out a fact-check on President Trump saying that “they spied on my campaign and they got caught.” The Washington Post called it a “conspiracy theory” that Trump was “touting.”

The GOP House Judiciary Committee, whose ranking Republican is Jim Jordan, took exception to the tweet and disputed the assertion.

They said that they did a fact check of their own and the results were, “Yea. That happened.”

FACT CHECK: Yea. That happened. https://t.co/SraNNfYbEJ

— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) August 28, 2020

Prior to that, the House Judiciary GOP account had retweeted Ryan Fournier, who referenced the “conspiracy theory,” saying, “just your friendly reminder that the Obama Administration illegally spied on the Trump Campaign.”

???????????? https://t.co/9Z8UqfMOtZ

— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) August 28, 2020

From an NPR Fact Check:

This is a reference to the Russia investigation, which examined contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election. Trump calls the investigation, which was opened by the FBI in July 2016 and eventually taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller, a “witch hunt,” and he has accused the Obama administration of spying on his campaign.

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz determined that the FBI had a proper basis to open the investigation, and he found no evidence of political bias in the bureau’s decision to do so. Horowitz did, however, find significant problems with the FBI’s handling of surveillance of Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser.

Horowitz also determined that the FBI used what are known as confidential human sources to approach Page and two other Trump campaign advisers to try to determine what they knew about Russia’s hacking of Democratic emails. Those efforts were consistent with FBI policy, Horowitz said, and he found no evidence of political bias in the decision to use them.