Trump slams Clinton report’s delays
He suggests official may be softening conclusions on handling of email probe
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump complained Tuesday that a Justice Department report being prepared on its handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation is “taking so long” and said he hopes it is not being weakened.
In coming weeks, the department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, is expected to release a nearly 500-page report criticizing the Justice Department and the FBI for their handling of the probe into Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state, according to people familiar with the matter.
The report is certain to provide Trump fodder for his criticism of federal law enforcement as the Russia probe continues and for his ongoing war of words with James Comey, the FBI director whom Trump fired and who oversaw the Clinton email investigation.
“What is taking so long with the Inspector General’s Report on Crooked Hillary and Slippery James Comey,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Numerous delays. Hope Report is not being changed and made weaker! There are so many horrible things to tell, the public has the right to know. Transparency!”
During the 2016 campaign, Comey drew scrutiny for his decisions to publicly exonerate Clinton, the Democratic nominee, in the probe and later, shortly before the election, to write to legislators that he was reopening the investigation.
A draft of the inspector general’s report has been completed, and — as is typical for such reports — those people whose accounts are key to the findings have been given an opportunity to review the document and provide feedback.
That feedback could change the report, if the inspector general determines that any of his facts or conclusions were wrong.
Typically, the final product comes after extensive negotiations, and the inspector general will often note where those he targeted disagreed with his assessment.
Trump’s tweet might put pressure on Horowitz to hold his ground if Comey, former deputy director Andrew McCabe and others push him to soften his conclusions.
However, the president’s weighing in could allow Comey, McCabe and others to charge that the inspector general’s work was politicized, and that could raise questions about his conclusions.
McCabe did just that when he was targeted by a separate report that accused him of lying to investigators about a media disclosure. The report came after the president had attacked McCabe for months, and Trump took to Twitter to celebrate it.
Contrary to what the president’s tweet suggests, the latest report is unlikely to criticize Clinton.
The inspector general was tasked with reviewing the decisions of those who investigated Clinton, not reinvestigating the former secretary of state herself.
The president also took to Twitter on Tuesday to blame Attorney General Jeff Sessions for the ongoing investigation into Russian election interference, suggesting in a morning tweet that the probe could have been shut down by now if Sessions hadn’t recused himself.
In the tweet, Trump renewed a familiar line of attack against the top U.S. law enforcement official, whom he has repeatedly castigated for recusing himself from the investigation now led by special counsel Robert Mueller.
“The Russian Witch Hunt Hoax continues, all because Jeff Sessions didn’t tell me he was going to recuse himself,” Trump said in the tweet. “I would have quickly picked someone else. So much time and money wasted, so many lives ruined...and Sessions knew better than most that there was No Collusion!”
The investigation into possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign was opened by the FBI in July 2016, months before Trump was elected president and long before he nominated Sessions to be attorney general.
Trump’s tweet seems to suggest that Sessions, who was among Trump’s earliest and most vocal campaign supporters, could have quashed the case once in office if he hadn’t recused himself — or at least not allowed the appointment of a special counsel.
Besides investigating possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia, Mueller is also probing whether Trump has obstructed the probe.
Several Senate Republicans warned Trump on Tuesday against obstructing justice or pardoning himself, even as they continue to say there’s no evidence to support allegations the president’s team colluded with Russia in the 2016 elections.
“I’d advise everybody from the president to the people operating the elevator, don’t obstruct justice,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who was one of the House managers of the impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton.
Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas, who voted to impeach Clinton for obstruction, also said presidential obstruction is impeachable. “A president can obstruct justice,” he told reporters.
Trump’s lawyers wrote a memo in January to Mueller arguing that the president wouldn’t be obstructing justice even if he ordered the investigation into his own campaign to end, or issued pardons. That memo was leaked to The New York Times over the weekend. On Monday, Trump also wrote on Twitter that he has an “absolute right” to pardon himself.
Meanwhile, a federal judge will weigh whether to jail former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort while he awaits trial after prosecutors accused him of making several attempts to tamper with witnesses in his criminal case.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson on Tuesday set a hearing for next week and gave Manafort until Friday to respond to the allegations made by Mueller’s team that Manafort and one of his associates “repeatedly” contacted two witnesses in an effort to influence their testimony.