Republicans slam FBI over handling of Clinton probe
WASHINGTON — Republicans and Democrats sparred for a second day Tuesday over an internal Justice Department report that sharply criticized former FBI Director James Comey for the bureau’s work investigating Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz answered questions for more than five hours at a joint hearing of two House committees — judiciary and oversight/government reform — a day after he testified about his 500page report before a Senate panel.
The report issued last week detailed how Comey and other senior law enforcement officials veered away from Justice Department practice, policies and professional standards in their handling of the Clinton case.
Horowitz found no evidence that specific investigative decisions in the case were affected by the political biases of some at the FBI, but Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., who chairs the oversight committee, said the bias that was found strikes at the integrity of the criminal justice system.
“If someone is prejudging the outcome of an investigation before it ends, and someone is prejudging the outcome of an investigation before it even begins, what is more textbook bias?” Gowdy said, after reading text messages between two senior FBI officials, agent Peter Strzok and lawyer Lisa Page.
Horowitz agreed that Strzok’s words were “completely antithetical to the core values of the department and extremely serious,” adding: “I can’t imagine FBI agents suggesting even that they might use Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz appears Tuesday at a hearing of two House committees. their powers investigating, frankly, any candidate for any office.” But he defended the report’s findings, stressing that “we didn’t find or see evidence of the prosecutors who were impacted by (Strzok’s) bias.”
Strzok is still an employee of the FBI, though officials have begun disciplinary proceedings that may lead to his ouster.
Strzok’s lawyer said he was escorted out of the FBI building Friday. Page left the FBI last month.
Tuesday on Capitol Hill, Republicans sought to use the findings to cast doubt upon the fairness of the ongoing special counsel probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and whether any of President Donald Trump’s associates coordinated with the Kremlin to influence its outcome.
Democrats lambasted their GOP colleagues for disregarding what they said was a more pressing problem for the country: the Trump administration’s move to separate migrant families at the border and detain children apart from their parents.
“Are we really going to sit here, 70 members of the Congress of the United States of America in 2018, and have a hearing that just repeats the hearings the Senate had yesterday on Hillary Clinton’s emails?” asked the Oversight committee’s senior Democrat, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland.
He said the U.S. government is running “child internment camps” at the border. “What country is that?” he asked angrily, urging Republicans to pressure Trump to reverse course.
Cummings’ remarks were another indicator of how reaction to the longawaited inspector general’s report on the Clinton investigation has largely fallen along partisan lines, with Republicans accusing the FBI of going easy on Clinton and Democrats pointing to Horowitz’s conclusion that whatever bias was uncovered did not appear to affect the case.
Horowitz tried to beat back suggestions from Republicans that his office had gone easy on the FBI, insisting “We didn’t pull any punches.”
Horowitz noted that his office had made a criminal referral to federal prosecutors about alleged false statements made to his investigators by the FBI’s former deputy director, Andrew McCabe.
Asked if McCabe had lied under oath, Horowitz answered: “In our view, yes. ”
McCabe has denied wrongdoing.