Justice report provides ammo for both Trump and his critics
Each side cherry picking details to suit particular talking points
WASHINGTON — A Justice Department watchdog report has turned into Washington’s latest Rorschach test, with President Donald Trump and his critics each cherry picking what they want to see from its findings to either discredit or defend investigators conducting the probe into the White House.
The 500-page report, which was more than a year in the making, offered a nuanced conclusion about the bureau’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email probe, criticizing the FBI and its former director James Comey personally but not finding evidence that political bias tainted the investigation in the months and days leading up to Trump’s election.
But Trump wielded it as a blunt instrument on Friday, bludgeoning the integrity of the Justice Department by pointing to the politically charged communication among FBI employees as proof that the FBI was biased “at the top level” and “plotting against my election.”
“The end result was wrong. There was total bias,” Trump declared Friday. “Comey was the ring leader of this whole, you know, den of thieves. It was a den of thieves.”
Trump allies seized upon text messages between agents, pointing to one from August 2016 that said “We’ll stop it” with regard to a potential Trump victory and another from a bureau lawyer that said “Viva le resistance.” And Trump took it one step further, barreling out of the White House Friday for an unannounced, early-morning television interview that turned into a nearly hour-long freewheeling give-and-take with reporters, during which he returned time and again to assert that report had exonerated him amid Mueller’s ongoing probe into Russian election interference.
“There was no collusion. There was no obstruction. The IG report yesterday went a long way to show that,’ Trump said on the White House North Lawn. “And I think that the Mueller investigation has been totally discredited.”
But Trump’s claim was baseless: the report made no conclusions about the president’s involvement. But its criticism of Comey — levied by an inspector general appointed by President Barack Obama — is important to Trump as he tries to inoculate himself against accusations that he obstructed justice by firing the FBI director last May.
The president’s lawyers want to paint the dismissal as something he was both authorized to do under the Constitution and correct to do based on Comey’s performance. The White House initially said Trump fired Comey over his handling of the Clinton investigation, though the president himself later muddied that explanation when he said he was thinking of “this Russia thing.”
The report did scold Comey for announcing his conclusion that Clinton should not face charges, saying it was insubordinate and extraordinary that he would not have coordinated the statement with his Justice Department bosses. It also chastised him for announcing, again without Justice Department backing, that the investigation would be reopened because of newly discovered emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop.