CHQ Staff
For the past several months those wishing to stall action on the obvious misdeeds of the Obama-era Department of Justice and FBI have been saying “wait for the Inspector General’s report,” however, the much-anticipated Department of Justice Inspector General’s report on the FBI’s conduct during the 2016 election appears to be a dud.
You can read the report here courtesy of FOX News.
Trump Tweet IG ReportNot that it isn’t full of bombshells – it just doesn’t get to the real core issues of what went on.
Indeed, as our friend Alex Pappas of FOX News reported, one of the most stunning findings concerns texts between agent Peter Strzok and his mistress and fellow FBI employee Lisa Page.
According to the report, Page texted Strzok in August 2016 and said: “[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!”
“No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it,” Strzok responded.
“In particular, we were concerned about text messages exchanged by FBI Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, Special Counsel to the Deputy Director, that potentially indicated or created the appearance that investigative decisions were impacted by bias or improper considerations,” the IG report said according to Pappas.
Strzok was a lead investigator on the Clinton case and later worked the Russia investigation before being removed from that assignment, but who this “we” was, is not exposed, or so far as we can tell from second hand reports and our first reading of the report, even delved into.
The report also faults the FBI – and specifically Strzok – for not acting quickly enough after the discovery of Clinton emails on the laptop of ex-Rep. Anthony Weiner in the fall of 2016.
The report says Strzok and others argued that the Russia investigation was a “higher priority” at the time than reviewing the laptop.
“We found this explanation unpersuasive and concerning,” the report said, noting the FBI could have gotten a search warrant in late September, but waited more than a month to do so — ultimately revisiting the case days before the election. Clinton has long said that announcement contributed to her defeat. But the report also suggested that Strzok, ironically, may have acted out of bias for Clinton in slow-walking the laptop review.
The inspector general concluded that Strzok’s text, along with others disparaging Trump, “is not only indicative of a biased state of mind but, even more seriously, implies a willingness to take official action to impact the presidential candidate’s electoral prospects.”
In another example cited in the report, on September 9, 2016, two agents exchanged the following messages:
Agent 5: “i’m trying to think of a ‘would i rather’ instead of spending time with those people”
Agent 1: “stick your tongue in a fan??”
Agent 5: “i would rather have brunch with trump”
Agent 1: “ha”
Agent 1: “french toast with drumpf”
Agent 5: “i would rather have brunch with trump and a bunch of his supporters like the ones from ohio that are retarded”
Agent 5: “:)”
According to the report, Agent 5 and Agent 1 are “experienced” counterintelligence agents. The report includes multiple conversations similar in nature that it describes as damning to the FBI’s reputation.
However, the report concluded that political bias did not ultimately taint the investigation overall.
So even though the report found blatant bias and that some senior bureau officials exhibited a disturbing “willingness to take official action” to hurt Trump’s chances to become president, Strzok’s boss, Comey, had no “political bias.”
Right.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the report “reaffirmed the president’s suspicions about Comey’s conduct and the political bias among some of the members of the FBI.”
In a statement, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the “significant errors” cited in the report had taken place during the Obama administration, but that the public could have confidence in the present leadership of the FBI and Department of Justice.
We wish that were true, but the fact of the matter is that it is the present leadership of the FBI and DOJ that withheld the bombshell text from Strzok to Page from Congressional investigators.
“If anyone else shows up in this report to have done something that requires termination we will do so,” Sessions said. in an interview with “Rising,” The Hill’s new TV show, which aired yesterday. If Attorney General Sessions is serious about that, then he should start by dismissing Peter Strzok and whomever was responsible for withholding the “We’ll stop Trump” text message from congressional investigators.
This is just the beginning of our review of the Inspector General’s report, we will have more detailed analysis of the report’s findings in Monday’s CHQ.
