WASHINGTON — In a stinging rebuke, the Justice Department watchdog declared Thursday that former FBI Director James Comey was “insubordinate” in his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation in the explosive final months of the 2016 presidential campaign. But it also found there was no evidence that Comey’s or the department’s final conclusions were motivated by political bias toward either candidate.
President Donald Trump had looked to the much-anticipated report to provide a fresh line of attack against Comey and the FBI as Trump claims that a politically tainted bureau tried to undermine his campaign and, through the later Russia investigation, his presidency. He is likely to use the harsh assessment of Comey as validation for his decision to fire him, an act now central to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether the president sought to obstruct justice
Clinton and her supporters, on the other hand, have long complained that she was the one whose election chances were torpedoed by Comey’s investigation announcements about her email practices, in the summer and then shortly before the election.
Yet the report’s nuanced findings — that the FBI repeatedly erred, though not for politically improper reasons — complicated efforts by Republicans and Democrats alike to claim total vindication.
The conclusions were contained in a 500-page report that documents in painstaking detail one of the most consequential investigations in modern FBI history and reveals how the bureau, which for decades has endeavored to stand apart from politics, came to be entangled in the 2016 presidential election.
The report also underscores efforts by senior FBI and Justice Department leaders in the final stages of the presidential race to juggle developments in the Clinton investigation — she had used private email for government business while secretary of state — with a separate probe into potential coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia. The Russia investigation, though diverting bureau resources and attention away from the final stages of the Clinton probe, was unknown at the time to the American public.
Comey, whom Trump fired shortly after taking office, bore the brunt of much the report’s criticism. It says the FBI director, who announced in July 2016 that Clinton had been “extremely careless” with classified material but would not be charged with any crime, repeatedly departed from normal Justice Department protocol. Yet it does not second-guess the his conclusion that Clinton should not have been prosecuted — despite assertions by Trump and his supporters that anyone less politically connected would have been charged.
It also rejected the Trump talking point that the FBI favored Clinton over him, saying, “We found no evidence that the conclusions by the prosecutors were affected by bias or other improper considerations; rather, we determined that they were based on the prosecutors’ assessment of the facts, the law and past department practice.”
Still, Trump supporters quickly focused on the report’s recounting of anti-Trump text messages from two FBI officials who worked the Clinton probe and later the Russia case, including one in which an agent says, “We’ll stop it” with regard to a possible Trump victory.
The report suggests that text from Peter Strzok, who was later dropped from Mueller’s team, “implies a willingness to take official action to impact the presidential candidate’s electoral prospects.” It did not find evidence that those views seeped into the investigation.
