Editorial

Plots thicken in the FBI Russia investigation

The allegations of Russian collusion in the last presidential election are serious, and our country is right to have the FBI investigating them.

But at the same time the FBI has to be trusted, or its findings won’t be seen as credible. Recent reports of outspokenly anti-Donald Trump agents formerly serving the bureau in the investigation aren’t helping. Some GOP lawmakers are calling for a second special counsel to investigate the FBI and the Justice Department following the revelation of anti-Trump bias on the part of an FBI agent who worked on both the Hillary Clinton and Trump investigations.

It would be unfortunate if a new special counsel investigation sealed the story in secrecy for months or years longer, just as the final report of an investigation into the DOJ and FBI is about to be made public.

Eight days before Trump was sworn in as president, the inspector general of the Department of Justice opened an investigation into the actions of the Justice Department and the FBI in the probe of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state.

Inspector General Michael Horowitz said his inquiry would look into FBI Director James Comey’s public announcements about the Clinton email investigation and whether some decisions and releases of information were based on “improper considerations.”

It’s the role of an inspector general to investigate possible wrongdoing by government agencies and officials and make the findings public in a report. That’s different from the role of a special counsel, who is a criminal prosecutor conducting an investigation in complete secrecy.

Even after Comey was fired by the president in May, the inspector general’s investigation into his actions as FBI director continued, along with a broader investigation into the decisions and actions of other employees of the Department of Justice and FBI.

The IG’s probe turned up thousands of personal texts between two FBI employees that showed intense anti-Trump bias. Peter Strzok, a former counterintelligence agent who had worked on the Clinton email investigation, had written to his friend, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, that Trump was “an idiot,” “a douche” and a “loathsome human.”

At the time of this discovery, Strzok was working on special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump’s alleged collusion with the Russian government.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that Mueller removed Strzok from the case in July, as soon as he heard about the anti-Trump texts. One text in particular, in which Strzok wrote that “we can’t take that risk” of Trump possibly being elected president, drew the attention of GOP lawmakers.

If the report shows that individuals in the Justice Department and the FBI engaged in illegal conduct, criminal charges may follow. But first, the public deserves to know what the government has been doing. That shouldn’t be secret any longer.

— Los Angeles Daily News, Digital

First Media