The just-released DOJ Inspector General’s report criticizes former FBI Director James Comey for three things:
1. His July 5, 2016 public criticism of Hillary Clinton and her staff for their “extreme carelessness” even as he was announcing that no charges would be filed against her or anyone else as a result of his investigation into her use of a private email server. Normally, if the DOJ is not going to charge anybody, it announces the decision and leaves it at that. It’s not normal to decline to file charges but then make a speech about how the target of the investigation should still be ashamed of herself for her “careless” (but not illegal) behavior.
2. Announcing to the press in late October 2016, days before the election, that the investigation was going to be reopened because they had found more emails from Hillary Clinton on a laptop seized as evidence in an unrelated case. Nothing new was found among the new emails and it didn’t change the original decision to decline to prosecute. All it did was bring the email issue back into the news in the final days of the campaign. Comey made the announcement even though he wasn’t required to do so unless and until they found something that could change the original conclusion, but he did it anyway because he knew the right would have a meltdown if the FBI did find something after the election (an election everyone assumed Clinton was going to win) but hadn’t said anything about reopening the investigation before the election.
3. Comey was accused of insubordination because he made decisions like those above independently, without properly involving the Attorney General or Deputy Attorney General. As he describes in his book, “A Higher Loyalty,” Comey did act independently because he knew the Trump campaign, some Republicans, and right-wing conspiracists were suspicious of Obama’s Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, and questioned her commitment to an independent investigation of Hillary Clinton. So at key moments Comey took the initiative, cut Lynch out of the decision process and acted independently. A little too independently, according to the Inspector General’s report, which accuses him of insubordination for not working more closely with his (Obama-appointed) superiors.
In all three cases, Comey’s decisions and actions could only have hurt Hillary Clinton in her bid for the presidency. Their cumulative impact probably cost her the election. That’s important to remember as Trump supporters try to spin the report and insist it reveals a conspiracy against Trump.
If Comey was leading a conspiracy to get Hillary Clinton elected, he was doing it wrong.
Also, the whole time we were talking about the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, the Trump campaign was being investigated for their ties to the Russians, who were actively trying to subvert our electoral process and get Trump elected.
But Comey never said anything during the campaign about that investigation.
Then there’s the text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who were clearly not Trump supporters and viewed the (then seemingly unlikely) possibility of Trump becoming president with the same horror the majority of Americans felt.
Trump supporters are going to make a big deal out of a couple of things Strzok texted to his paramour, but the Inspector General’s office took those comments seriously and examined them carefully to determine whether his personal political bias affected the investigation into Clinton’s emails. This is what the IG found (Comey’s investigation into Clinton’s emails was codenamed “Midyear”):
“... in some instances Strzok and Page advocated for more aggressive investigative measures in the Midyear investigation, such as the use of grand jury subpoenas and search warrants to obtain evidence…”
“...our review did not find evidence to connect the political views expressed in these messages to the specific investigative decisions that we reviewed; rather, consistent with the analytic approach described above, we found that these specific decisions were the result of discretionary judgments made during the course of an investigation by the Midyear agents and prosecutors and that these judgment calls were not unreasonable.”
So, yes, even FBI agents have political opinions, and they may say silly things to their secret lovers, but in the adult world of dedicated people who take their responsibilities seriously, that doesn’t mean they can’t do their jobs, and it doesn’t mean there’s no such things as facts, evidence, and objective reality.
https://www.justice.gov/file/1071991/download