Nope. No secretive cabal. Just a bunch of law enforcement personnel used to little scrutiny not really following the procedures they were supposed to.
We concluded that the FBI's decision to open Crossfire Hurricane and the four
related individual investigations was, under Department and FBI policy, a
discretionary judgment call and that the FBI's exercise of discretion was in
compliance with those policies. For the reasons described below, we found that
each investigation was opened for an authorized purpose and, in light of the low
threshold established by Department and FBI predication policy, with adequate
factual predication.