(CNSNews.com) - Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz is expected to release his long-awaited report on FBI FISA abuse on Dec. 9, and bits of it are starting to leak out.
CNN first reported Thursday night that "A former FBI lawyer is under criminal investigation after allegedly altering a document related to 2016 surveillance of a Trump campaign adviser (Carter Page)."
According to CNN: "The possibility of a substantive change to an investigative document is likely to fuel accusations from President Donald Trump and his allies that the FBI committed wrongdoing in its investigation of connections between Russian election meddling and the Trump campaign."
But The Washington Post reported on Friday that "the alleged misconduct did not affect the overall validity of an application for surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser."
President Trump, calling in to "Fox & Friends" on Friday morning, was asked if the report "goes to your argument that somebody at the FBI was out to get you?"
"Well, it certainly does," Trump said.
And they were spying on my campaign and it went up to the top and everybody knows it, and now we're going to find out. You have "Bull" Durham who is supposed to be the toughest -- I've never met him, never spoke to him. But he's supposed to be the smartest and the best.
And he works for Bill Barr, a great attorney general. We would maybe have ended this thing a lot sooner had he (Barr) been there originally, but you have some people that are great people now. Patriotic people, they love our country.
And this was spying on my campaign, something that has never been done in the history of our country. This was an overthrow attempt at the presidency. They tried to overthrow the presidency. This is a disgrace. I'm not surprised to see it. It is just starting to come up. I think this is nothing compared to what you will see next couple of weeks. These people are sick.
Trump predicted that what we're going to see "is perhaps the biggest scandal in the history of our country, political scandal." But he said he is staying out of the investigations being conducted by Horowitz and Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham:
And I purposely stay out. I tell Bill Barr to handle everything. I wouldn't have to. I could get very much involved, but I purposely don't. And I haven't, and you know what? It's better that way, I guess. I don't have any obligation legally to do that, but I let them handle it.
So you have a FISA report coming out, which the word is, it's historic, that's what the word is. That's what I hear. And if it's historic, you're going to see something. And then, perhaps even more importantly, you have Durham coming out, shortly thereafter. He's the U.S. Attorney and he's already announced it's criminal. And we'll see what happens. But I'll tell you what, you have a lot of very, very bad people.
And, you know, a lot of people say 'deep state.' I don't like to use the word deep state. I just say they're really bad, sick, people.
Asked if the attempt to spy on him went "up into the West Wing of the Obama administration," Trump said people "at the highest levels of government" were spying on his campaign.
"This is my opinion. I said it a long time ago. Remember when I put out a tweet, and I talked about the wiretapping in quotes, meaning the modern-day version of whatever wiretapping may be. And all hell broke loose."
How high up did it go? Trump was asked.
Trump mentioned former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and "all of these losers that you had over there."
He also mentioned former National Security Adviser Susan Rice and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, although he couldn't remember Power's name. ("The person that worked at the United Nations who went after FISA reports -- and went after reports like she ate them for lunch," Trump said of Power.)
"No, I think this goes to the highest level," Trump continued. "I hate to say it. I think it's a disgrace. They thought I was going to win. And they said, how can we stop him? They wrote up the phony, fake dossier, the disgusting, fake dossier, and they tried to have it put out prior to the election." (Trump also said "they say" the dossier is connected to Ukraine.)
Trump predicted the "fake news" will try to "downplay" the Horowitz report.
"I don't think you can downplay it. Democrats and fake news, they are one in the same. They will downplay it.
"When I see the (impeachment) hearings, we have a great day, pick up the phony "New York Times," which is a phony total paper. I don't read it anymore. You can't read it. It has no relationship to the truth. And you read a story that took place and they don't tell you what happened. They only put in the bad, they don't put in the good. Same thing with "Washington Post." It's a phony paper. We don't even have it in the White House. We saved a lot of money."
Trump also doubled down on his belief that the hacked DNC server was given to CrowdStrike, "a company owned by a very wealthy Ukrainian," he said. "I still want to see the server. The FBI didn't get a hold of that server."