As the White House and the nation await what is expected to be a scathing report on the Justice Department’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email scandal, word is leaking out that it will be especially brutal to fired FBI Director James Comey and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
ABC News reported Wednesday that the report, from the DOJ’s independent Inspector General Michael Horowitz, will brand Comey ‘insubordinate.’
That’s a judgment of the former top lawman for telling Congress, barely a week before the 2016 election, that he was reopening a dormant probe into classified material nestled among other files on Hillary Clinton’s private email server.
The word choice suggests Lynch may have ordered Comey not to tell Congress that he had rebooted the investigation, a move that mad voters aware of his decision and likely had political consequences.
Lynch’s transgression appears to be her declaration that she would accept the reccomendations of the FBI – which ultimately recommended no prosecution – shortly after a secret meeting with former president Bill Clinton on an airport tarmac.
A bombshell report from the Justice Department’s inspector general is expected to scorch fired FBI director James Comey’s decision to reopen the Hillary Clinton classified email investigation just days before the 2016 election
Former attorney general Loretta Lynch will be under the inspector general’s microscope, reportedly for announcing just after a secret meeting with Bill Clinton that she wouldn’t intervene in deciding whether to charge Hillary with a crime
That episode raised deep suspicions about whether she was putting her thumb on the scales of justice to help the Clintons, although both insisted they didn’t speak about the then-Democratic presidential candidate’s email scandal.
The late-October 2016 restart of the Hillary Clinton probe came after a tranche of her emails were discovered on a laptop belonging to disgraced former Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner.
Weiner was married to Huma Abedin, Clinton’s deputy campaign manager, from whose account the emails were forwarded.
President Donald Trump put public pressure on the inspector general Monday to finish the report, and said he hoped it wasn’t being made ‘weaker.’
The IG was originally scheduled to complete its findings by the end of May. The potentially explosive document has been highly anticipated on Capitol Hill; the Senate Judiciary Committee was already planning for – but recently postponed – a hearing to hear Horowitz’s testimony.
‘What is taking so long with the Inspector General’s Report on Crooked Hillary and Slippery James Comey,’ Trump tweeted.
President Donald Trump asked this week why it was ‘taking so long’ for the Justice Department’s IG to complete his report, details of which are now leaking out
‘Numerous delays. Hope Report is not being changed and made weaker! There are so many horrible things to tell, the public has the right to know. Transparency!’
There has been no indication that Trump has seen the report ahead of its release.
Horowitz has already solicited the required comments from the FBI and the Justice Department.
Trump’s call for ‘Transparency!’ could be an effort to push the IG not to shield material the FBI may have tried to conceal.
There have been similar internal battles between the FBI and congressional Republicans over the release of information about the origins of the FBI’s Russia probe.
PRESSURE: The president said he hoped the report wasn’t being made ‘weaker’ – a likely reference to the comment period where the Justice Department and FBI get the chance to make comments or dispute conclusions
Amid growing interest in the report, the Senate Judiciary Committee last week gave notice that it would hold a hearing titled: ‘Examining the Inspector General’s First Report on Justice Department Decisions Regarding the 2016 Presidential Election.’
It pushed the hearing back a week, from its original date of June 5 to June 12.
‘We are not going to hold the hearing until the report comes out,’ said a Judiciary panel spokesman on Monday.
Horowitz told a House Oversight hearing late last year his office was ‘aiming to release the report in late winter/early spring — hopefully in that March/April time period.’
WHAT’S TAKING SO LONG? The president asked why Michael Horowitz, inspector general of the Justice Department, hadn’t completed his report.
Rudy Giuliani, attorney for U.S. President Donald Trump, said he had ‘no head’s up’ that the FBI would reopen the Clinton email probe during the 2016 campaign
One person the IG interviewed in the course of his investigation was Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who on Sunday said he provided satisfactory assurances that he did not have inside information on the FBI reopening the Clinton email investigation.
Asked if he expected to be identified in the report as getting leaked information from the FBI, Giuliani told NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’: ‘Oh no, no, absolutely not. No. Impossible. I didn’t get any leaked information from the F.B.I.’
Giuliani said he had ‘no idea that Weiner was involved in this at all. Had no idea they were going to reopen it.’
Giuliani in advance of the FBI’s surprise move had touted ‘some pretty big surprise,’ telling Fox News: ‘You’ll see.’
He told NBC he was referring to a major TV ad buy, ‘where we were going to buy a tremendous amount of time unlike anything we had ever done before.’ He says he was able to ‘show them a memo, a contemporaneous memo I have’ about it.
Asked by host Chuck Todd if he had a heads-up, Giuliani replied: ‘Right, no heads up. I had a speculation.’