More Evidence of the Critical Failure of the IG Report - By Josh Marshall
June 16, 2018 3:52 pm
Yesterday I posted this lengthy post about a critical shortcoming in the 2016 election IG Report. Despite specifically being to requested to address the issue, Inspector General Horowitz basically ignored lots of evidence about bias against Secretary Clinton. Indeed, he didn’t so much ignore evidence as ignore the question itself, specifically about anti-Clinton sentiment in the FBI’s New York field office and specifically whether the fear of leaks out of that office was the driver of the October 28th Comey letter which clearly damaged Clinton significantly in the final days of the campaign. It turns out that I simply missed some of the clearest evidence for that anti-Clinton bias in the report itself.
Before looking at that, let’s address another point. The IG Report is in a sense of a masterpiece bureaucratic document. If the effort were to hide evidence of bias out of the New York field office it does a poor job. It simply draws no inferences from that evidence. So, for instance, much of the report is framed around examining whether pretty good evidence of hostility toward candidate Trump (though by no means only Trump) affected the actions of lead agent Peter Strzok. But whether the abundant evidence of bias and actions by those hostile to candidate Clinton had an effect is just passed over.
I have not read the entire 500+ page document. My comments were based on reading significant portions of it and reading reporting about the portions I had not read myself. It turns out that meant I missed even more striking evidence of what I was talking about in last night’s post. (Let me credit the sleuthing by the lawyer who goes by “NYCSouthpaw” on Twitter for alerting me to this.) This comes from the Inspector General’s interview with former AG Loretta Lynch. She is discussing a meeting with James Comey on October 31st, 2016, three days after Comey had sent his letter to Capitol Hill.
Comey’s description of this meeting focused on Lynch bucking him up, saying that the information would have leaked anyway and that that would have been worse. Her description is much more extensive and focuses on Comey’s own views of the New York field office (emphasis added) …
Now, I knew that the laptop had been handled in a case out of New York. And so I said, you know, we have to talk about the New York office…and the concern that both you and I have expressed about leaks in the past. And I said, do you think that this was the right way to deal with the issue, the concern about leaks?… He didn’t have much of a response. But we were having a conversation…. And I said, you know, I’ve talked, you and I have talked about that before…. [McCabe] and I have talked about them before….
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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/more-evidence-of-the-critical-failure-of-the-ig-report
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Comey was a huge reason, among many, as to why it's not thank you Madame President, instead of it now being what is desired by this potus, Heil Trump.
