WASHINGTON: The Justice Department’s inspector general said on Thursday that he would open a broad investigation into how the FBI director, James Comey, handled the case over Hillary Clinton’s emails, including his decision to discuss it at a news conference and to disclose 11 days before the election that he had new information that could lead him to reopen it.
The inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, will not look into the decision not to prosecute Clinton or her aides. But he will review actions Comey took that Clinton and many of her supporters believe cost her the election.
They are: the news conference in July at which he announced he was not indicting Clinton but described her behaviour as “extremely careless”; the letter to Congress in late October in which he said that newly discovered emails could potentially change the outcome of the FBI’s investigation; and the letter three days before the election in which he said that he was closing it again.
The inspector general’s office said that it was initiating the investigation in response to complaints from members of Congress and the public about actions by the FBI and the Justice Department during the campaign that could be seen as politically motivated.
For Comey and the agency he heads, the Clinton investigation was politically fraught from the moment the FBI received a referral in July 2015 to determine whether Clinton and her aides had mishandled classified information. Senior FBI officials believed there was never going to be a good outcome, since it put them in the middle of a bitterly partisan issue.
Whatever the decision on whether to charge Clinton with a crime, Comey, a Republican former Justice Department official appointed by President Barack Obama, was going to get hammered. And he was.
Republicans, who made her use of a private email server a centrepiece of their campaign against Clinton, attacked Comey after he decided there was not sufficient evidence she had mishandled classified information to prosecute her. The Clinton campaign believed the FBI investigation was overblown and seriously damaged her chances to win the White House and resented Comey’s comments about Clinton at his news conference. But the campaign was particularly upset about Comey’s two letters, which created damaging news stories at the end of the campaign, when Clinton and her supporters thought they had put the email issue behind them.
In the end, the emails that the FBI reviewed — which came up during an unrelated inquiry into Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of a top Clinton aide, Huma Abedin — proved irrelevant to the investigation’s outcome.
The Clinton campaign said Comey’s actions quite likely caused a significant number of undecided voters to cast ballots for President-elect Donald Trump.
FBI officials said on Thursday that they welcomed the scrutiny. In a statement, Comey described Horowitz as “professional and independent” and promised to cooperate with his investigation. “I hope very much he is able to share his conclusions and observations with the public because everyone will benefit from thoughtful evaluation and transparency,” Comey said.
Brian Fallon, former press secretary for the Clinton campaign and former top spokesman for the Justice Department, said the inspector general’s investigation was long overdue.
“This is highly encouraging and to be expected, given Director Comey’s drastic deviation from Justice Department protocol,” he said. “A probe of this sort, however long it takes to conduct, is utterly necessary in order to take the first step to restore the FBI’s reputation as a non-partisan institution.”
Horowitz has the authority to recommend a criminal investigation if he finds evidence of illegality, but there has been no suggestion that Comey’s actions were unlawful. Rather, the question has been whether he acted inappropriately, showed bad judgement or violated Justice Department guidelines. It’s not clear what the consequences would be for Comey if he was found to have done any of those things.
The Justice Department and the FBI have a long-standing policy against discussing criminal investigations. Another Justice Department policy declares that politics should play no role in investigative decisions. Both Democratic and Republican administrations have interpreted that policy broadly to prohibit taking any steps that might even hint at an impression of partisanship.
Inspectors general have investigated FBI directors before, but rarely. The most high-profile example was the investigation of William S. Sessions, who was fired by President Bill Clinton after an internal inquiry cited him for financial misconduct. In recent years, the inspector general has investigated accusations of wrongdoing by the FBI involving some of its most sensitive operations, including surveillance and counterterrorism programmes.
As part of the review, the inspector general will examine other issues related to the email investigation that Republicans have raised. They include whether the deputy director of the FBI, Andrew G. McCabe, should have recused himself from any involvement in it.
In 2015, McCabe’s wife ran for a state Senate seat in Virginia as a Democrat and accepted nearly $500,000 in political contributions from Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a key ally of the Clintons. Though McCabe did not assume his post until February 2016, months after his wife was defeated, critics within the agency and outside of it felt that he should have recused himself.
The FBI has said that McCabe played no role in his wife’s campaign. He also told his superiors that she was running and sought ethics advice from FBI officials.
Horowitz said he would also investigate whether the Justice Department’s top congressional liaison, Peter Kadzik, had improperly provided information to the Clinton campaign. A hacked email posted by WikiLeaks showed that Kadzik alerted the campaign about a coming congressional hearing that was likely to raise questions about Clinton.
Investigators will be helped in gathering evidence by a law that Congress passed just last month, which ensures that inspectors general across the government will have access to all relevant agency records in their reviews.
The law grew out of skirmishes between the FBI and the Justice Department inspector general over attempts by the FBI to keep grand jury material and other records off limits. The new law means Horowitz’s investigators should have access to any records deemed relevant.
Trump has not indicated whether he intends to keep Comey in his job. When he cleared Clinton of criminal wrongdoing during the campaign, Trump accused him of being part of a rigged system.
Although the president does not need cause to fire the FBI director, a critical inspector general report could provide justification to do so if Trump is looking for some.
