DOJ IG Michael Horowitz’s Report on 2016 FBI Released
IG Michael Horowitz testifies before congress on Clinton email investigation
Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s review of the FBI’s handling of its investigation of the Trump campaign in 2016 is out, and folks are pouring over the 476 pages.
A much-anticipated review of how the FBI came to investigate the Trump campaign’s possible links to Russia has validated the agency’s decision to open its probe.
The report, compiled by the Justice Department’s inspector general, stresses that political bias did not influence the bureau’s actions, as President Donald Trump and his allies have frequently alleged.
But the document is also littered with criticisms of FBI officials and how they vetted some information, such as a dossier of salacious allegations compiled by an ex-British spy.
Key takeaways from the report
The FBI did not use the Steele dossier to open Russia probe
Lynch, Comey sat for IG interviews
No evidence political bias was a factor
The full redacted public report can be read here:
In a side and bizarre detail it appears Ivanka and Steele knew each other. She was trying to get him to work for the trump org early in the decade. Which is certainly something.
The best summary i’ve seen of this so far is from Adam Serwer. The investigation was appropriate but proper but there are long standing problems with the FISA courts. Neither of which should be much of surprise.Report
Ind of like how 17 intelligence agencies and the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that Russia not Ukraine interfere in our elections in 2016. Bt hey lets keep beating the Ukrainian Hunter Biden dead horse.Report
All 17 intelligence agencies wouldn’t have even known to talk about Russians if they hadn’t been directed to by Obama White House officials, who were trying to undermine the 2016 election with the help of the information in the dossier that was likely provided by Russian intelligence to undermine the election.
Durham, in an unusual move, said he disagrees with the findings in the IG report, and one take is that the IG report assumed the reasons the FBI gave for starting an investigation were valid, as the IG is only concerned with what was going on internally to the DoJ. Durham is looking at the externals, the players in the field who were feeding the DoJ false information.Report
So, the entire apparatus of the US government, plus all our NATO allies were engaged in a coordinated global conspiracy to protect Hunter Biden and frame Trump and the innocent Russian government?Report
According to a fair amount of testimony, yes. The Obama Administration coached Ambassador Yovonovitch on how to handle Hunter Biden questions that might come up during her confirmation hearing. They knew it was a big problem, and one that completely undermined any idea that we were focused on fighting corruption, instead sending a signal that “We are way more corrupt than you folks are!”
The NATO allies were on board because, I would assume, Obama and Biden told them what stance to take. Otherwise it makes absolutely no sense at all why an uninvolved country’s leaders would strongly object to an investigation into a wildly corrupt ex-Soviet energy company owned by a former “socialist” government official who’d fled to Russia to avoid prosecution.
Ukraine’s previous prosecutor, who replaced the prosecutor that Biden had had fired, was interviewed just yesterday by One America News. (You should note the absolute lack of interviews of all the relevant Ukrainian actors by CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, and NBC). He said that Ambassador Yovonovitch perjured herself in the impeachment hearing, and started rattling off names of important people who she told him not to investigate. He also showed some relevant paperwork. The Ukrainian government officials are perfectly willing to testify, but Democrats are determined to pretend they don’t even exist. That is quite telling, and will become part of the “drip drip” of information that fatally undermine their entire narrative.Report
Do you know how the government works in the executive branch? I ask because those 17 intelligence agencies ARE the Administration, as is the Department of Commerce, or Interior or NASA. The White House hires policy advisers to interpret the the information the agencies produce. Sure, federal executive branch agencies have an obligation to implement the administration’s policies – and the professional bureaucracy does that across administrations and party boundaries.
And yes, the intelligence community allowed their words to be twisted in the run up to the Iraq war. That doesn’t mean the WH led them in that instance or this one.
Again nice try, please collect your parting gifts on the way out.Report
Wasn’t this the report that was supposed to send the Dems into screaming fits and have them running for the exits as the whole narrative on Trump’s corruption upended? I’m not seeing much upending going on here- I don’t even see the table trembling.Report
It seems to have sent Bill Barr into a fit of spinning.Report
The whole Steele and Ivanka thing is going to really cause fevers to rise among the Q signsReport
Read George’s take above and then get back to me. There’s simply no way that real objective fact will drive him or anyone else to accept this. Even when Durham runs out his clock and fails to produce any really new investigative outcome they will find a way to spin it to their preferred alternative.
And as we know people named Trump seem to have a great knack for denying the existence of their relationships with people they have been photographed with multiple times over multiple years.Report