Thursday is expected to see the release of the inspector general’s report on FBI and DOJ activity around the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server. The report is being forwarded to Congress on Thursday morning. Expectations are that the report will find much what every observer has noted from day one: Former FBI Director James Comey broke department guidelines and ignored the instruction of his superiors in both speaking out about an investigation that did not end in indictment, and in ostentatiously reopening that investigation only days before the election. However, the winds of spin are already turning, and it appears that, no matter what the report actually says, Republicans are preparing to use it to hammer the investigation into Trump’s conspiracy with Russia.
As the New York Times reports Trump’s team can be expected to comb the report for phrases that will support their theory that a “secret cabal” within the FBI put in “the fix” for Clinton and saved her from being locked up over security breaches an order of magnitude lesser than those committed by Jared Kushner in the average week. It won’t matter if the phrases are tucked into longer statements about Comey actually going beyond the mark by being too hard on Clinton—which was, after all, the excuse that Trump ultimately used to fire Comey.
Bloomberg reports that the contents of Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report will expressly show that Comey did not maneuver to give Clinton a favorable ruling to please President Obama or Attorney General Lynch.
Horowitz: We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that improper considerations, including political bias, directly affected the specific investigative actions we reviewed
However, the report will state that Comey’s actions exceeded his authority, departed from department norms, and cast a cloud over the agency through his actions. Republicans are standing by to turn all these statements into exactly what they are not: Evidence of some sort of anti-Trump bias that justifies ending the investigation of Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
What the report doesn’t show: Any conspiracy against Trump. In fact, the actions of Comey explicitly helped Trump. So much so that post-election polling suggests that Comey’s letter reopening the investigation put Trump over the top to victory in the election. But with more than 500 pages to sift, Republicans have their scissors out, and they’re preparing to slice and dice their way to hurricane-force spin.
Politico also reports that the inspector general’s report “cuts against” Republican claims of a bias in favor of Clinton. It will back the position that Comey’s “departures” from standard procedure harmed Clinton and boosted Trump.
The best that Republicans might get from the IG report on a straight reading is diminishing the value of Comey’s testimony in any examination of how his firing is related to obstruction of the Trump–Russia investigation. That’s if there is any straight reading of this report.
Because Republicans have a back up plan if the report doesn’t feed their need for distraction, deflection, and demeaning of the investigation. They’re ready not just to pick up Horowitz’s phrases they can use to attack Comey and his former deputy Andrew McCabe, but to then turn around and attack Horowitz as an “Obama guy” who made the report weaker to protect his former boss.
They can always order up another report. After all … see Benghazi.