Republicans try to link Clinton, Russia inquiries
WASHINGTON – House Republicans sought Tuesday to tie a watchdog report on the handling of the Hillary Clinton email scandal to the credibility of the separate Russia investigation, despite repeated statements by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz that his report does not connect the two.
Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said FBI officials showed bias in both the Clinton and Russia investigations.
“There were FBI agents and attorneys who decided to prejudge the outcome of the Hillary Clinton case before the investigation ended,” Gowdy said in his opening statement at a joint hearing with the House Judiciary Committee. “And these exact same agents and attorneys prejudged the outcome of the Russia investigation before it even began. ... That is textbook bias.”
Horowitz, the sole witness at the hearing, said his investigation and report focused only on how the FBI and Justice Department handled their investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. He said he could not draw any conclusions about special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and whether there was collusion between Donald Trump’s campaign and the Kremlin.
“In the days since you released your report, Mr. Inspector General, I am struck by the total disconnect between the Republican party line and your actual findings,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, the senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. “The report does not find, as President Trump continues to complain, that the FBI ‘plotted against (his) election.’ The report also does not ‘totally exonerate’ the president on the Russia matter, no matter how you read it.”
Last Thursday, Horowitz released a 568-page report that blasted former FBI Director James Comey for bypassing the chain of command and violating Justice Department norms in his handling of the investigation of Clinton’s email server in 2016. The report concluded that Comey was not motivated by political bias when he cleared Clinton of criminal wrongdoing.
Though he found no bias by Comey, Horowitz found “deeply troubling” text messages between two FBI officials that savaged Trump as a presidential candidate.
Those texts, exchanged between senior counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok and bureau attorney Lisa Page, fuel claims by Trump and his GOP allies in Congress that the FBI and Justice Department are biased against Trump.
The report says Page wrote to Strzok in a text message, “(Trump’s) not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” In response, Strzok wrote, “No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it.”
The report characterized the politically charged text messages as “antithetical to the core values of the FBI.” Still, investigators “did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that improper considerations, including political bias, directly affected the specific investigative actions we reviewed.”
Mueller removed Strzok from the Russia inquiry last year after Horowitz informed Mueller about the anti-Trump texts. Page had already left his team.