This is the second in a series of pieces on the DOJ Inspector General’s (IG) Report. You can read the first here.

Former Director James Comey’s actions during the Hillary Clinton investigation were “extraordinary and insubordinate.” So declares the Department of Justice Inspector General’s report, which came Thursday with as many pages and as much fanfare as a Harry Potter novel. (You can read it here for yourself.)

Comey earns a slam for acting independently of then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch in announcing that Hillary Clinton faced no charges, despite being guilty of being “extremely careless” in the handling of classified information. 

Comey is also knocked for sidestepping the DOJ again and announcing the re-opening of the investigation known as “Midyear” after 347,000 emails collected to Hillary were found on the laptop of Anthony Weiner.

Big Jim gets mocked for claiming he did not realize Weiner was married at the time to Hillary’s right hand Huma Abiden. A claim that drew this perceptive response on Twitter:

Everyone is laughing @Comey for not knowing Weiner was Huma Abedin's husband. But think about that for a minute: Comey thought some random dude had Hillary's emails on his laptop and didn't think twice about it.

— Margot Cleveland (@ProfMJCleveland) June 14, 2018

So did Comey lie to the IG? Or did he simply prove he was too dense to be director? 

The Two Doors … Both Hit Comey in the Face

The IG Report knocks Comey for “ad hoc decision making based on his personal views.” Comey thought he was stuck with two doors he could walk through, “speak” or “conceal.” Though Inspector General Michael Horowitz admits Comey faced a difficult dilemma, he didn’t buy Comey’s argument.

Comey’s description of his choice as … between “two doors,” one labeled “speak” and one labeled “conceal,” was a false dichotomy. The two doors were actually labeled “follow policy/practice” and “depart from policy/practice.”

Comey insists he went rogue because he thought Loretta Lynch too compromised by her hobnobbing with Bill Clinton. He also believed that if he didn’t notify Congress and the public he planned to reopen the investigation, and news of the Weiner emails came out after Hillary won, there would be hell to pay. The FBI would appear to have helped Hillary win by keeping the news secret until after the election, and President Hillary would look “illegitimate.” (See also the small matter that Hillary’s emails on Weiner’s computer subjected her to blackmail, leaving her compromised from day one. But I digress.)

Sympathy for the Tall Guy

I’m actually going to cut Comey some slack on this one. A bit. For starters, Comey was right. Suppose Comey had kept his mouth shut about the emails found on Weiner’s computer. And, as Democrats insist, Hillary would have won. Then someone at the NYPD goes public with the fact hundreds of thousands of Clinton emails appeared on the computer of a suspected pedophile. Including classified emails.

Can you imagine the uproar? “The Obama FBI knew and didn’t tell us?!” Congress and the American people kept in the dark (again)?

Unknown to Comey at the time, the FBI did try to bury the emails. The IG report states the FBI learned about the emails in late September. McCabe did not act on the emails until late October, and only did so when the agent on the Weiner case in New York got ansy. (Worries about the New York office possibly leaking the story sent Lynch into fury, as The Stream reported in April.)

The FBI offered four excuses for the delay. Horowitz didn’t buy a single one of them. 

The IG “did not identify a consistent or persuasive explanation for the FBI’s failure to act for almost a month after learning of potential Midyear-related emails on the Weiner laptop.”  

Here’s an explanation.

Lynch and Yates Want to Run Out the Clock

DOJ in the form of Loretta Lynch and Sally Yates wanted to run out the clock on investigations into Hillary. As did Andrew “Thanks for Giving My Wife $700K” McCabe. Get Hillary elected and everything gets swept up and buried deep in the Swamp. 

Yates as good as admits it in the IG Report. The IG discovered that “Agents involved in the Clinton Foundation investigation were instructed to take no overt investigative steps prior to the election.” When asked about this, Yates’ answer was they didn’t want to “interfere with the election.”

Get that. They were blocking an investigation into the alleged criminal “pay-for-play” activities of a candidate for political reasons. Their candidate. (For the record, did they stop the investigation into Trump because of the election? No. They launched an investigation into Trump based, in part, on a dossier their candidate paid for.) 

Now let’s be honest. Knowing how Yates and Lynch rolled, is it any wonder Comey would do an end run to protect the FBI?

The IG is right. In a sane world, the FBI Director and the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General would communicate and work together as one. 

But in that corrupt politicized world, both Comey and Lynch were out to protect their own. Hillary would win. And Lady Justice? She’d face the tender mercies of the new First Husband.