Justice report provides ammo for both Trump and his critics

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 used it to bludgeon the Justice Department Friday, pointing to the politically charged communication among FBI employees as proof 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 ringleader 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.” Trump asserted that the report had exonerated him amid Robert Mueller’s 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. “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 said Trump fired Comey over his handling of the Clinton investigation, though the president muddied that explanation when he said he was thinking of “this Russia thing.”

Jonathan Lemire and Eric Tucker