[Washington Examiner] Attorney General William Barr revealed that he and FBI Director Christopher Wray agreed that, in the future, agents must get approval from the heads of the DOJ and the bureau before launching investigations into presidential candidates.Barr announced the significant investigative reform during a Monday press conference about Saudi national Mohammed Alshamrani’s terrorist attack at a Pensacola air base that killed three U.S. service members in December. Barr’s comments during a question-and-answer session come in the wake of DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the Trump-Russia investigation that found serious investigative missteps by investigators and abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
"We’re considering a number of additional things, and Chris Wray and I have discussed a number of possibilities," Barr told reporters. "One of the things that we have agreed on is that the opening of a counterintelligence investigation of a presidential campaign would be something that the director of the FBI would have to sign off on and the attorney general would have to sign off on."
Before now, no such green light from agency leaders was needed.