OREANDA-NEWS. U.S. Attorney General William Barr challenged key outcomes of the Justice Department inspector general, Michael Horowitz, criticizing the relevance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) surveillance of Republican Donald Trump election headquarters in 2016.

“I believe that our people have been turned upside down for three years, based on a complete fake that the irresponsible press fanned and spun. I believe that gross violations of the law on monitoring foreign intelligence were committed, and I see examples of obscure actions that are unacceptable in FBI", said the head of the Justice Department in an interview with NBC on Tuesday.

Trump, who later became the president of the United States, repeatedly criticized the law, arguing that its provisions were used to spy on its campaign headquarters. According to a previous version of the law, American intelligence agencies didn't have the right to conduct similar surveillance of Americans without a court order, but US citizens could fall under the program and be monitored if they contacted foreigners who were in the field of view of intelligence. At the beginning of 2018, Republicans in Congress managed to amend the law making it difficult to track Americans.