Comey blasted in Clinton email probe
Inspector general’s report shows no evidence of FBI political bias though anti-Trump text found
The Justice Department inspector general on Thursday castigated former FBI Director James Comey for his actions during the Hillary Clinton email investigation and found that other senior bureau officials showed a “willingness to take official action” to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president.
The 500- page report, documenting major missteps in one of themost politically charged cases in the FBI’s history, provides the most exhaustive account to date of bureau and Justice Department decision-making throughout the investigation of Clinton’s use of a private email server, particularly in the months
just before she would lose the presidency to Trump.
The inspector general did not find evidence supporting assertions made by the president and his allies that political bias inside the FBI had rigged the case to clear Clinton, but the report cited numerous instances of unprofessionalism, bias and misjudgment that hurt the bureau’s credibility. In particular, the report singled out lead agent Peter Strzok as showing anti-Trump bias that could have affected his thinking on the case during the immediate runup to the 2016 election.
The report is a blistering rebuke of Comey, who has spent recent months on a book tour promoting his brand of ethical leadership. Inspector general Michael Horowitz accused Comey of insubordination, saying he flouted Justice Department practices when he decided only he had the authority and credibility to make key decisions and speak for the Justice Department.
Comey made a “serious error of judgment” in sending a letter to Congress on Oct. 28, 2016, announcing he was reopening the investigation of Clinton’s use of the server while secretary of state, the report found, and called it “extraordinary that Comey assessed that it was best” for him not to speak directly with either the attorney general or the deputy attorney general about his decision beforehand.
Some senior bureau officials, the report found, exhibited a disturbing “willingness to take official action” to hurt Trump’s chances to become president.
Perhaps the most damaging new revelation in the report is a previously unreported text message in which Strzok, a key investigator on both the Clinton email case and the investigation of Russia and the Trump campaign, assured an FBI lawyer in August 2016 that “we’ll stop” Trump from making it to the White House.
“[ Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” the lawyer, Lisa Page, wrote to Strzok.
“No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it,” Strzok responded. Page and Strzok were romantically involved and used their work phones to engage in long-running text discussions of various work and personal topics, according to people familiar with the case.
In a message posted to Twitter on Thursday afternoon, Comey wrote: “I respect the DOJ IG office, which is why I urged them to do this review. The conclusions are reasonable, even though I disagree with some. People of good faith can see an unprecedented situation differently. I pray no Director faces it again. Thanks to IG’s people for hard work.”
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the report “reaffirmed the president’s suspicions about Comey’s conduct and the political bias among some of the members of the FBI.”
In a statement, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the “significant errors” cited in the report had taken place during the Obama administration.
“Accordingly, this report must be seen as an opportunity for the FBI— long considered the world’s premier investigative agency — and all of us at the Department to learn from past mistakes,” Sessions said.
Sessions said that a new leadership team brought in by Comey’s replacement, FBI Director Christopher Wray, was “one in which the American people can have confidence.”
The attorney general suggested others could be ousted in the report’s wake. Several officials said Strzok, in particular, could be fired or forced to resign in coming days.
Strzok’s lawyer, Aitan Goelman, called the report “critically flawed” for suggesting his client’s political views might have influenced the FBI’s weekslong delay in reopening the Clinton case in October 2016.
“Mistakes were made,” the FBI said in a state- ment, admitting to “errors of judgment, violations of or disregard for policy, or, when viewed with the benefit of hindsight, simply not the best courses of action. They were not, in any respect, the result of bias or improper considerations.”
The report aimed to define once and for all what the FBI and Justice Department did right and what was wrong in the Clinton probe, but partisans are likely to seize on different findings to buttress their long-held views about that investigation.
For Trump, the report provides chapter upon chapter of fresh ammunition for his attacks on the FBI, which he has accused of political bias in investigating whether any of his campaign associates may have conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 election.
To Clinton and her supporters, who have long argued that Comey’s decisions robbed her of an election victory, the report will likely be received as bitter vindication of her claims the FBI director veered far beyond official policy in speaking publicly about her case, and reopening it in the final days before the election.
The report determined that several FBI investigators — including Comey — also broke bureau protocol by using “personal email accounts for official government business.”
The inspector found five instances in which Comey either drafted official messages on or forwarded emails to his personal account, and at least two instances in which Strzok used his personal email for official business — including one “most troubling” instance on Oct. 29, 2016, when he forwarded “an email about the proposed search warrant the midyear team was seeking on the Weiner laptop” fromhis FBI account to his personal email.
The discovery is ironic, given that the FBI was exploring Clinton’s own use of a personal email for work-related business and whether classified information traversed her server.