11 Quick Things To Know About The Inspector General's Report

11 Quick Things To Know About The Inspector General's Report

1. Learn How To Interpret An IG Report

The best way to understand an inspector general (IG) report is less as a fiercely independent investigation that seeks justice and more like what you’d expect from a company’s human resources department. Employees frequently think that a company’s human resources department exists to serve employees. There’s some truth in that, but it’s more true that the human resources department exists to serve the corporation.

The IG is also a government bureaucrat producing government products that are supposed to be calm and boring. In the previous report that led to Andrew McCabe’s firing as deputy director of the FBI and referral for criminal prosecution, his serial lying under oath was dryly phrased as “lack of candor.” In this report detailing widespread problems riddled throughout the Clinton email probe, the language is similarly downplayed. That’s particularly true in the executive summary, which attempts to downplay the actual details that fill the report with evidence of poor decision-making, extreme political bias, and problematic patterns of behavior.

2. FBI Agent Who Led Both The Clinton and Trump Probes Promised He’d Prevent Trump’s Election

Such as this one! On page 420, the IG says that the conduct of five FBI employees who were caught talking about their extreme political bias in the context of their duties “has brought discredit to themselves, sowed doubt about the FBI’s handling of the Midyear investigation, and impacted the reputation of the FBI.” The Midyear investigation was the code for the Clinton probe. Or note this blistering passage:

[W]hen one senior FBI official, [Peter] Strzok, who was helping to lead the Russia investigation at the time, conveys in a text message to another senior FBI official, [Lisa] Page, that ‘we’ll stop’ candidate Trump from being elected—after other extensive text messages between the two disparaging candidate Trump—it is not only indicative of a biased state of mind but, even more seriously, implies a willingness to take official action to impact the presidential candidate’s electoral prospects. This is antithetical to the core values of the FBI and the Department of Justice.

The report goes on to say that the text messages and Strzok’s decision to prioritize the counterintelligence probe of the Trump campaign over the Clinton email criminal investigation “led us to conclude that we did not have confidence that Strzok’s decision was free from bias.”

This text is not just interesting because the FBI’s deputy head of the counterintelligence division who was investigating a major-party candidate told the woman he was cheating on his wife with that “we” would stop the candidate from becoming president. It’s also interesting because this text was hidden from congressional committees performing oversight of the FBI.

3. Comey Mishandled The Clinton Probe In Multiple Ways

It’s worth re-reading Acting Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s May 9, 2017, recommendation that James Comey be fired as FBI director. He cited Comey’s usurpation of the attorney general’s authority in his press conference announcing that Clinton’s case would be closed without prosecution, the release of derogatory information about Clinton despite the decision to not indict her, and Comey’s letter to Congress announcing the FBI had reopened a probe against Clinton.

The IG backs up each and every one of those critiques, and adds much more detail to them.

We concluded that Comey’s unilateral announcement was inconsistent with Department policy and violated long-standing Department practice and protocol by, among other things, criticizing Clinton’s uncharged conduct. We also found that Comey usurped the authority of the Attorney General, and inadequately and incompletely described the legal position of Department prosecutors.

4. Comey Is Slippery And Weird

The 568-page report includes many examples of Comey being duplicitous and sneaky during his handling of the Clinton email probe. For instance, he asked Attorney General Loretta Lynch how to handle questions regarding the criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information on a secret server. She told him to call it a “matter.” He didn’t object and even complied.

Comey admitted that he concealed his intentions from the Department until the morning of his press conference on July 5, and instructed his staff to do the same, to make it impracticable for Department leadership to prevent him from delivering his statement. We found that it was extraordinary and insubordinate for Comey to do so, and we found none of his reasons to be a persuasive basis for deviating from well-established Department policies in a way intentionally designed to avoid supervision by Department leadership over his actions.

He claimed that he didn’t grasp the significance of the hundreds of thousands of Clinton emails being found on Weiner’s computer because he didn’t know that Weiner was married to Clinton aide Huma Abedin. Beyond being too ridiculous to believe, the claim is hardly exonerating. It would mean he was not interested to learn that hundreds of thousands of Clinton emails relevant to a highly charged criminal investigation were found on the laptop of an unrelated man.

5. FBI Has A Massive Leak Problem And Is Doing Nothing About It

As mentioned, both Lynch and Yates were worried that performing legitimate oversight of Comey would be leaked against them to the media. Fear of leaks was also mentioned by many top FBI officials as a major reason that the Southern District of New York was able to force the FBI to reopen the Clinton probe.

“We have profound concerns about the volume and extent of unauthorized media contacts by FBI personnel that we have uncovered during our review,” the report stated. Two attachments were included showing rampant discussions with reportersby people not authorized to be talking to reporters. One FBI executive was caught having had 26 conversations with one reporter and seven conversations with another reporter.

6. FBI Almost Got Away With Ignoring Clinton Emails On Weiner Laptop

In September 2016, when an investigator in the Southern District of New York found hundreds of thousands of Clinton emails and Blackberry messages on a laptop being searched in relation to an investigation of former Rep. Anthony Weiner, he immediately alerted his supervisors. They alerted the FBI, who sat on the information for weeks, only acting after the New York office complained repeatedly.

By October 3, the case agent assigned to the Weiner investigation expressed concern that the FBI appeared to be sitting on what he’d told them. Later he told the IG:

7. Breathtaking Bias

Some FBI defenders latched onto the IG’s claim that he “did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that improper considerations, including political bias, directly affected the specific
investigative decisions we reviewed.” All that means is that none of the politically biased texts specifically said political bias was leading them to make certain decisions. Of course, that would be a weird thing to find in any case.

What the investigators found, however, was breathtaking anti-Trump and pro-Clinton bias from five of the key employees handling the Clinton email probe. No evidence was found of pro-Trump bias. And this evidence of profound bias is only for those who were foolish enough to record their extreme views. The IG also apparently had no texts from Justice Department officials, perhaps because Justice didn’t preserve them.

The texts range from vile insults of Trump and his supporters to fears about how awful a Trump presidency would be and the need to prevent it. One employee said Trump voters were “all poor to middle class, uneducated, lazy POS.” One FBI lawyer discussed feeling “numb” by Trump’s November 2016 election win, later proclaiming “Viva le Resistance” when asked about Trump.

Strzok wrote in July 2016, “Trump is a disaster. I have no idea how destabilizing his Presidency would be.” After the election, Page wrote that she’d bought “All the President’s Men,” adding, “Figure I needed to brush up on watergate.” The two openly fantasize about impeachment.

8. Clinton Got Breaks, But Some Backfired

While Comey harmed Clinton with how he handled his public announcements about her case, the IG report paints an investigation that was overall quite favorable toward her and her associates. During the Robert Mueller investigation, the federal government has played hardball with Trump associates, ringing them up on false statement charges, raiding their offices, arresting them without warning, and encroaching on attorney-client relationships. For Clinton, a much different approach was taken.

To take just one example, look at the case of Paul Combetta, an employee who handled the migration of Clinton’s email accounts across servers then later deleted the emails. Clinton probe members were sure he was lying about the deletion of the emails in violation of a congressional preservation order. In repeated interviews, he claimed he didn’t delete her emails.

The agents had an email where he talked about the “Hilary coverup operation.” They decided that wasn’t a big deal. One agent said he believed Combetta should have been charged with “false statements for lying multiple times.” But overall they decided it was just so confusing, that the failure to tell the truth was “largely due to a lack of sophistication and poor legal representation.” They gave him immunity, and he started singing. He admitted deleting the emails “despite his awareness of Congress’s preservation order and his understanding that the order meant that ‘he should not disturb Clinton’s email data on the PRN server.'” Sounds nice.

President Obama gave interviews where he stated that Clinton didn’t have intent to harm national security, a talking point later carried by Comey himself. Even before Comey followed Obama’s lead, observers worried that Obama was giving guidance as opposed to offering his opinion. An Obama White House spokesman said he knew Clinton was not a “target” of the investigation, suggesting he had insider knowledge. The FBI claimed he didn’t have insider knowledge.

When the New York office told the FBI about Weiner’s laptop, it appears that the FBI tried to run out the election clock before dealing with it. It would have worked, too, if the New York office hadn’t pushed the matter right before the election — the absolute worst time to deal with a reopening of the investigation.

9. Obama Lied When He Said He Knew Nothing About Hillary’s Secret E-mail Scheme

The IG found that Obama was “one of the 13 individuals with whom Clinton had direct contact using her clintonemail[.]com account.”

In fact, Clinton used her private email for “an exchange with then President Obama while in the territory of a foreign adversary,” a move that led investigators to believe hostile actors had likely gained access to her server. But a paragraph in a draft of Comey’s exoneration of Clinton was changed from Obama to “another senior government official,” and later deleted.

10. FBI Agent Joked Clinton Associate Who Lied Would Never Be Charged, Questioned Legitimacy Of Investigation

FBI agents discussed how a witness who obviously lied to them about the Clinton probe would never be charged:

FBI Employee: ‘boom…how did the [witness] go’
Agent 1: ‘Awesome. Lied his -ss off. Went from never inside the scif [sensitive compartmented information facility] at res, to looked in when it was being constructed, to removed the trash twice, to troubleshot the secure fax with HRC a couple times, to everytime there was a secure fax i did it with HRC. Ridic,’
FBI Employee: ‘would be funny if he was the only guy charged n this deal’
Agent 1: ‘I know. For 1001. Even if he said the truth and didnt have a clearance when handling the secure fax – aint noone gonna do sh-t’

That same agent also openly discussed political considerations affecting the Clinton probe. The IG gave a few examples:

11. FBI’s Insulting Response

FBI Director Christopher Wray gave a press conference in front of a compliant press corps where he said, “nothing in this report impugns the integrity of our workforce as a whole or the FBI as an institution.” In fact, the report paints a picture of an FBI with a problematic culture.

It’s not just Comey’s usurpation of authority and failure to comply with practices. Multiple people were involved in his condemned decisions. Others were cited for bad judgement in recusal decisions or failure to adhere to recusals. Political bias was rampant in the team of people who handled both the Clinton and Trump email probes. So were leaks, accepting gifts from reporters, incompetence, and other problems.

Instead, Wray issued a strawman defense of employees, bragged about the high number of applicants to the agency, and talked about the low percentage of recruits who were accepted.