Investigative journalist Sara Carter says she walked into colleague John Solomon's office with a conclusion she did not want to reach: people inside the FBI were spying on the duly elected president of the United States before he even took office. That conversation, she now says, launched the reporting effort she calls "the most important story in American history."
Carter made the remarks during an exclusive appearance on Sean Hannity's podcast, where she and Solomon recounted the origins of their years-long investigation into the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, and the anonymous government officials who, they say, urged them to keep digging.
The account adds personal detail to a story that has already produced FISA warrant scandals, inspector general referrals, and a federal surveillance settlement. What Carter and Solomon describe is not a single leak or a single bad actor. It is, in their telling, a coordinated misuse of intelligence powers that stretched across agencies and across years.
Carter told Hannity she resisted her own findings at first.
"I didn't want to believe what I was seeing."
But the evidence from her sources kept pointing in the same direction. She described the moment she decided to confront Solomon directly:
"I went into John's office and I said, 'John, I need to talk to you. I believe that there are people in the FBI spying on President-elect Trump, the duly elected president of the United States.'"
Solomon's initial reaction, as Carter recounted it, was cautious. He came back and said he wasn't too sure. But neither journalist was willing to drop the thread. Carter said they combined their source networks and began pulling the story apart together.
"I had my sources together, [and] together, we were able to unravel the beginnings of what was to be the most important story in American history."
That is a large claim. But what followed, the FISA abuse revelations, the inspector general reports, the documented failures of FBI leadership, has given it considerable weight. The bureau's conduct during the 2016 campaign and the presidential transition has since been the subject of multiple federal investigations and official findings of misconduct.
Solomon offered his own account of the investigation's early days. In 2017, shortly after he appeared on Hannity's television show discussing a sharp rise in the unmasking of Americans' communications, two unidentified men pulled into his driveway in a government vehicle with its flashers on.
They did not identify their agency. But their message, as Solomon recalled it, was blunt.
"Well, that thing you were talking about tonight on television... it's far deeper."
The men told Solomon he was "at the tip of a very large iceberg" and urged him to "keep drilling down." One of them went further, describing what he called a deliberate scheme at the highest levels of government.
"There is an incredible political dirty trick that's being carried out using the most awesome powers of the intelligence community."
Solomon now characterizes the underlying conduct as part of an 11-year conspiracy to undermine Donald Trump, though he has not publicly specified the start and end dates of that alleged timeline. The identities of the two officials remain unknown.
The encounter raises obvious questions. Who sent them? What agency did they represent? Were they acting on their own conscience or at someone's direction? Those questions remain unanswered. But the warning, if accurate, would mean that people inside the government knew the intelligence apparatus was being weaponized, and wanted someone outside the system to expose it.
Carter and Solomon's reporting predated, and in some cases prompted, official scrutiny that confirmed serious problems inside the FBI. Current FBI Director Kash Patel has since stated publicly that the bureau lied to obtain FISA warrants used to surveil Trump's 2016 campaign. Those warrants, which targeted former campaign adviser Carter Page, relied on opposition research that the FBI knew was unverified.
The consequences of that surveillance abuse have continued to unfold. The Justice Department ultimately settled Carter Page's surveillance lawsuit for $1.25 million, a tacit acknowledgment that the government's conduct could not withstand legal scrutiny.
Then there is the conduct of former FBI Director James Comey. Inspector General Michael Horowitz referred Comey's handling of memoranda about his conversations with President Trump to the Justice Department. The referral involved seven memos totaling 15 pages, two of which were designated classified at the lowest level. Comey acknowledged orchestrating the leak of at least one memo to the New York Times, conduct that National Review noted was "not normal," even as the DOJ ultimately declined prosecution.
The decision not to prosecute Comey drew sharp criticism from conservatives who saw it as evidence of a two-tiered justice system, the very thing the Justice Department itself acknowledged it must guard against. As the National Review analysis put it, "clear criminal misconduct must be prosecuted; otherwise we have a two-tiered justice system." Whether Comey's behavior crossed the criminal line or merely the line of propriety, the episode reinforced a broader pattern: senior FBI officials treated sensitive information with a casualness that would have ended the career of any lower-ranking agent.
Solomon's television appearance that triggered the alleged driveway encounter focused on the unmasking of Americans' communications, a practice that became one of the most politically charged elements of the Trump-Russia saga. Unmasking refers to the process by which senior officials request the identities of U.S. citizens whose communications were incidentally collected during foreign intelligence surveillance.
A sharp rise in such requests during the presidential transition raised alarms among congressional investigators and journalists alike. The practice is legal under certain conditions, but critics argued it was being used to monitor political opponents under the guise of national security.
The fact that government officials allegedly sought Solomon out after he raised the issue on national television suggests the unmasking spike was not a routine bureaucratic matter. Someone inside the system thought it was important enough to flag, in person, in a driveway, with flashers on.
That kind of hidden government activity is precisely what makes accountability so difficult. When the tools of intelligence collection are turned inward, the public has almost no way to know, unless someone on the inside decides to talk.
Carter and Solomon's accounts are compelling, but they rest heavily on unnamed sources and recollections that cannot be independently verified from public records alone. The two government officials who approached Solomon have never been identified. The specific surveillance activities Carter alleges have not been detailed in her public remarks. The 11-year conspiracy timeline Solomon references lacks defined start and end dates.
None of that means the claims are false. Much of what Carter and Solomon reported early on, FISA abuse, politicized intelligence, institutional dishonesty at the FBI, was later confirmed by inspectors general, congressional investigations, and court proceedings. Their track record on this story is strong.
But the remaining gaps matter. If the intelligence community was indeed weaponized against a presidential candidate and then a president-elect, the full accounting has not yet been delivered. The public still does not know every official who participated, every decision that was made, or every communication that was unmasked.
The ongoing scrutiny of the FBI under Director Patel, who has faced public confrontations for his reform efforts, suggests the institutional resistance to transparency is far from over.
The Trump-Russia investigation consumed years of national attention, paralyzed a presidency, and divided the country along lines that have never fully healed. If the underlying predicate for that investigation was, as Carter and Solomon allege, a "political dirty trick" executed through intelligence powers, then the damage extends far beyond one administration.
It means the most powerful surveillance tools in the world were turned against a domestic political figure, not because of evidence, but because of politics. It means career officials in agencies sworn to protect the Constitution instead used their authority to subvert the outcome of a democratic election.
Carter said she didn't want to believe what she was seeing. A lot of Americans felt the same way. The difference is that what she and Solomon reported kept turning out to be true.
When the government's own watchdogs, courts, and settlement checks confirm the misconduct that two journalists flagged years earlier, the question is no longer whether it happened. The question is why so few people have been held accountable.
