Watchdog: Comey not biased in Clinton probe
But report called former FBI director ‘insubordinate’
WASHINGTON — In a stinging rebuke, the Justice Department watchdog declared Thursday that former FBI Director James Comey was “insubordinate” in his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation in the explosive final months of the 2016 presidential campaign. But it also found there was no evidence that Comey’s or the department’s final conclusions were motivated by political bias toward either candidate.
Clinton and her supporters have long complained that she was the one whose election chances were torpedoed by Comey’s investigation announcements about her email practices, in the summer and then shortly before the election.
Yet the report’s nuanced findings — that the FBI repeatedly erred, though not for politically improper reasons — complicated efforts by Republicans and Democrats alike to claim total vindication.
The conclusions were contained in a 500-page report that documents in painstaking detail one of the most consequential investigations in modern FBI history and reveals how the bureau, which for decades has endeavored to stand apart from politics, came to be entangled in the 2016 presidential election.
The report also underscores efforts by senior FBI and Justice Department leaders in the final stages of the presidential race to juggle developments in the Clinton investigation — she had used private email for some government business while secretary of state — with a separate probe into potential coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia. The Russia investigation, though diverting bureau resources and attention away from the late stages of the Clinton probe, was unknown at the time to the American public.
Comey, whom Trump fired shortly after taking office, bore the brunt of much criticism for a series of scrutinized decisions, though it does not secondguess the FBI’s conclusion that Clinton should not have been prosecuted.
The inspector general concluded that the FBI director, who announced in July 2016 that Clinton had been “extremely careless” with classified material but would not be charged with any crime, repeatedly departed from normal Justice Department protocol.
The report suggests that text from Peter Strzok, who was later dropped from special counsel Robert Mueller’s team which is presently investigating Trump, “implies a willingness to take official action to impact the presidential candidate’s electoral prospects.” But it did not find evidence that those views seeped into the investigation.
The watchdog faults Comey for his unusual July 5, 2016, news conference at which he disclosed his recommendation against bringing charges in the email investigation. Cases that end without charges are rarely discussed publicly. And Comey did not reveal to Attorney General Loretta Lynch his plans to make an announcement.
“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,” the report says.
Comey has said he was concerned that the Justice Department itself could not credibly announce the conclusion of its investigation, in part because Lynch had met earlier in the summer aboard her plane with former President Bill Clinton. Both said they did not discuss Hillary Clinton’s case.
Concerned about the “appearance that former President Clinton was influencing” the probe, Lynch began talking to her staff the next morning about possibly recusing herself from overseeing the investigation, according to the report. She told the inspector general she decided not to step aside because it might “create a misimpression” that she and the former president had discussed inappropriate things.
The report lambastes Strzok and a now-retired FBI lawyer, Lisa Page, for text exchanges that it says were “deeply troubling” and created the appearance “that investigative decisions were impacted by bias or improper considerations.” Most of the problematic texts relate to the FBI’s Russia investigation, the report notes.