FBI IG report falls short.

Koo Koo Ka Choo Mr. Horowitz
The View from the Middle

I have to admit that when I heard the coverage of Inspector General Horowitz’ long awaited report on the Clinton e-mail investigation (oops, should I have called it a matter?) I suffered a tremendous feeling of déjà vu. To me, this was James Comey’s combination indictment and exoneration of Hillary Clinton back in July of 2016 all over again. You will remember that Comey castigated and condemned Hillary Clinton for at least 10 minutes for her “extremely careless” handling of her classified, confidential and even top-secret emails. He originally called her actions “grossly negligent” but Peter Strzok suggested he change the language because “gross negligence” violates the statute she was accused of breaching. Comey added that “any reasonable person should have known” that her server was no place to store or transmit these work-related emails. Then after he had shared all these damning findings, James Comey suggested that “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.” What?

And the same thing happened with IG (Inspector General) Horowitz’ 500+ page report of that investigation. The IG report was filled with example after example of disgusting political prejudice by much of the FBI leadership including Peter Strzok, Lisa Page and Andy McCabe (Deputy Director of the FBI). Peter Strzok, who was the lead investigator in both the Hillary Clinton matter/investigation and the Russian collusion investigation, for example had this classic exchange with Lisa Page – Page: (Trump’s) not ever going to be President, right? Right? Strvok: No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it.” Other people working on his team called Trump a F---ing idiot and a loathsome human. But their contempt didn’t stop there. They went on to call all Trump voters (over 60 million people) “poor, uneducated, lazy POS (Pieces of Shit).” Is this the kind of prejudice and bigotry we are willing to accept from the Federal Bureau of Investigation?

But just like the disconnect between James Comey’s verbal indictment of Hillary Clinton and his implausible vindication of her actions, somehow Michael Horowitz concluded that the sea of political bias that he discovered at the FBI did not impact the end result, which was an exoneration of Hillary Clinton. Really? I was as astounded by this conclusion as I was with Comey’s absolution of Hillary Clinton. Hey Michael, maybe Comey’s exoneration of Hillary is at least one example of that apparent political bias in action. But in case that’s not enough, let me give you some more evidence.

During the investigation of Hillary’s e-mails, six people within her inner circle were given immunity, including Cheryl Mills, Huma Abedin and Heather Samuelson. And what exactly did we get for those immunity deals? Nothing! How many immunity deals have been given to the Trump inner circle in the Russian collusion investigation? None. Instead we get the pre-dawn raid of Paul Manafort’s home and the destruction of Michael Flynn’s life for allegedly lying to the FBI while the agents involved can’t even agree to whether he lied at all. Is that equal treatment or signs of bias manifesting itself in investigative actions?

Next, let’s look at the Hillary Clinton interview. Remember, James Comey had written his speech clearing Ms. Clinton weeks before this interview took place. Lisa Page then warned Andy McCabe (#2 guy at the FBI) to limit the number of agents and prosecutors in this interview to “2 and 2 because she might be our next President” and they didn’t want to get her angry!! They also didn’t tape this interview or put Mrs. Clinton under oath and allowed her to answer “I don’t recall” or “I don’t remember” 40 times during this interview. Gee, I wonder if she actually answered any questions?

Finally, Mrs. Clinton had four lawyers with her at this interview, so her party actually outnumbered the FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors. Is that normal? Also, one of the lawyers in that meeting was Cheryl Mills who was at least a witness if not a subject of this same investigation (or was this a “matter”, I’m so confused by now). Cheryl Mills, remember, had received immunity and had been barred for representing Mrs. Clinton in this matter. So, what the heck was she doing there? The National Review called this “mind boggling” and “astonishing”, but I guess Mr. Horowitz didn’t see anything odd about it.

So, koo koo ka choo Mr. Horowitz for finding the mountain of political bias that has infected the FBI, but as for your conclusion, I’m with Lindsey Graham when he said during Monday’s Senate hearing, “I’m not buying it”. What the American people want is equal justice. If Kristian Saucier (the sailor who took six pictures on a submarine) was sentenced to a year and a half of confinement, what should Hillary Clinton get for taking BleachBit to 30,000 subpoenaed emails? What should James Comey get for lying to Congress and illegally leaking classified information? Hopefully you’ll do better in the next report you’re doing on the initiation of the Russian investigation.