IG Report Set to Drop. Whose Head Will It Land On?

By Al Perrotta Published on June 14, 2018

If all goes well, at 3 p.m. Eastern Thursday, the long-awaited DOJ Inspector General’s Report on the FBI and DOJ’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation will be made public.

Finally, we will have a clearer picture of the shenanigans that went on with the case leading up to the 2016 election. 

Inspector General Michael Horowitz and his team of over 400 investigators and agents have been working since January  2017. Then, last summer, far from the staccato of the Swamp, U.S. District Attorney John Huber was appointed to handle any criminal activity Horowitz was uncovering. It’s naive to think Huber’s been sitting in Utah a year twiddling his thumbs.

So who’s in for a bad day?

The Players

Fox News has a handy article on what some of the familiar faces may be facing. Briefly …

Andrew McCabe

  • He’s already been fired and referred for criminal prosecution for lying to agents about leaks to The Wall Street Journal.
  • He’s also under investigation over whether he should have recused himself as an investigator, after a Clinton machine operative put nearly $700,000 into his wife’s political campaign. 
  • He’s also under investigation over the delay in reviewing the Clinton emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop. He learned about them in September 2016, but sat on the info for more than a month. Did he want to run out the clock until after the election? Pressure from Lynch?

James Comey

  • Just how improper was it for James Comey to make that public announcement in July about the Clinton email investigation? First, he detailed how she was “extremely careless” with her handling of classified information. Then he declared he was recommending against prosecution. Then, days before the election, Comey publicly announced the investigation was being reopened because of the discovery of Hillary emails on Weiner’s laptop. According to ABC News, a draft of the IG report calls these actions “insubordinate.” Democrats are apoplectic. 
  • Comey and his team drafted Hillary’s exoneration letter months before interviewing the key witnesses, let alone Hillary herself. 
  • Comey and his team also handed out immunities like theater programs, without getting anything in return. They allowed a key witness to Hillary’s actions act as her lawyer at the interview, didn’t do the interview under oath, and in general did not follow normal FBI protocols. 

Loretta Lynch

  • Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch is facing intense scrutiny for her infamous tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton. The secret and extremely suspicious meeting took place just days before Hillary was to be interviewed. 
  • It was that dubious, improper meeting that Comey says convinced him he had to act separate from Lynch. 
  • Lynch is also being questioned for telling Comey to publicly describe the Clinton investigation as a “matter,” the very language used by the Hillary campaign. As one high ranking FBI official said, “So we’re now the Federal Bureau of Matter?”

Peter Strzok

  • The Inspector General uncovered a vast trove of text messages between Peter Strzok and his mistress Lisa Page, a top-ranking FBI lawyer. Strzok, then deputy to the assistant director for counter-intelligence, was a central player in the Clinton investigation. He and Page also shared a loathing for Donald Trump.
  • How much did that bias play a hand in the investigation?
  • Strzok had a hand in editing the Hillary exoneration letter. The wording was changed from “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless.” “Grossly negligent” is the wording of the criminal statute; “extremely careless” skates around it.
  • The two spoke of an “insurance policy” to thwart Trump if the “plan” discussed in Andrew McCabe’s office failed. What in the world was that about? 

My Questions

While the above areas of inquiry are crucial, they barely scratch the surface. 

Take McCabe: Why would IG Horowitz care about that particular WSJ article in the first place? What was McCabe’s leak about? McCabe was defending himself from allegations by other agents that he was in Hillary’s pocket and blocking the investigation into the Clinton Foundation. McCabe’s defense was he wasn’t doing the blocking, it was the Lynch Justice Department. (This raises another question: How much is Horowitz looking at efforts to mess with that investigation?)

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Take Lynch: Strzok-Page texts suggest Lynch knew Comey wasn’t going to prosecute. Said Strzok when Lynch said publicly she wouldn’t challenge any Comey recommendation, “And yeah, it’s a real profile in couragw [sic], since she knows no charges will be brought.” How would Lynch know? Was the fix in all along?

For that matter, how would Strzok know? The text came one day before he sat down to interview Hillary Clinton. Meaning, it certainly appears, Comey was lying when he said his decision wasn’t made until the investigation was complete. 

Take Page: Page warned Strzok to go easy on Clinton, given that she’d likely be president and she’d remember who was with her and who was against her. This is significant. Page wasn’t just a girlfriend saying, “Be careful, Hon. That woman’s dangerous.” This was one of the top lawyers for the FBI advising an FBI investigator to pull his punches.

When Trump secured the GOP nomination, Page texted that there would be intense pressure to wrap up the Clinton investigation. Pressure from who? Well, that same day, May 4, 2016 Page arranged a meeting at the White House for the next day. She metwith White House officials. That day, the Washington Post published an article quoting “U.S. officials close to the matter” as saying they are not finding evidence that Hillary Clinton “intended to break classification rules.”

Was the pressure from the White House? Intention is not part of the statute. Did IG Horowitz investigate that angle? Where’d that
“intention” business come from? We know the answer.

Take Obama

Just two weeks before that White House meeting, President Obama told Fox News he didn’t think Hillary “intended” to harm national security and that there is “classified and then there is classified.” Comey has suggested Obama’s comments were not helpful. Has Horowitz discovered they were more than that? Did the FBI feel pressured by Obama to use this false “intent” threshold to clear Hillary? After all, Comey did cite Hillary’s lack of intent in his decision not to prosecute.

Further, we mentioned earlier the changes in the draft exoneration. One of the most significant was the removal of a reference to Hillary Clinton emailing the President via her unsecured email while in a hostile country. Why was this removed? Was it because that email proves President Obama knew about Hillary’s private email server, despite claims to the contrary? Did the White House put pressure on the FBI to remove the reference? To cover-up knowledge of what Hillary was up to and perhaps his own use of non-governmental email? (Always keep in mind, they expected Hillary to win and none of this to come out.)

All told, just how much was the White House involved in the Hillary Clinton email investigation? How much political pressure was applied?

The Final Question

In a few hours we should start to know the answer to a crucial question: Who’s been cooperating with IG David Horowitz? Who’s been fessing up and pointing fingers and pointing Horowitz in the right direction? Given that Strzok still technically works for the FBI … in the HR department no less … and Page did, too, until very recently, it’s a good bet they’ve been working with Horowitz almost since day one. Who else?

Also, Andrew McCabe reportedly vowed that if he was going down he’d take everybody with him. 

Finally, keep in mind that today’s IG report is only half the tale. A separate IG report dealing with the dubious FBI investigation into Trump-Russia Collusion is on its way. Many of these same players are involved. 

Who’s dirty? Who’s coming clean? Who’s going to jail?  We only start to find out in a couple hours.

 

Al Perrotta is the Managing Editor of The Stream, and co-author of the newly released Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration.

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