The Justice Department inspector general is probing whether departed FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe sat on knowledge that Anthony Weiner’s laptop held emails that were potentially relevant to the then-closed Clinton email investigation, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.
Then-FBI Director James Comey’s announcement on Oct. 28 that the FBI had learned of “emails that appear to be pertinent to the [Clinton email] investigation” — and his notice on Nov. 6 that the emails hadn’t changed anything — was widely cited as a boon for Donald Trump in the final days of the 2016 election.
McCabe took an early leave from his post at the FBI on Monday after meeting with FBI Director Christopher Wray and discussing the inspector general’s probe, the Post reported, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter.
Though Comey said on Oct. 28th that he had learned of the emails the day prior, the Post reported Tuesday that McCabe was “aware of the matter by late September or early October at the latest, according to the people familiar with the matter.”
The Post reported that McCabe’s detractors and defenders have different opinions on his actions regarding the emails on Weiner’s laptop — with some saying he and other officials appropriately took their time to determine whether they were relevant to the Clinton probe, and others saying he let the question sit without explanation.
The Post’s report also says that unnamed people involved at the time differ in their opinions of when Comey and McCabe first learned about the emails: At the same time, or weeks apart.
“A key question of the internal investigation is whether McCabe or anyone else at the FBI wanted to avoid taking action on the laptop findings until after the Nov. 8 election, these people said,” the Post reported. “It is unclear whether the inspector general has reached any conclusions on that point.”
It is Justice Department — and thus, FBI — policy to stay out of politics with the announcement of developments in investigations, especially within days of an election.
Read the Post’s full report here.
Read the latest editor’s backgrounder (Prime access) on this story »
Is this going to somehow change the outcome of the 2016 election?
Ok, maybe if McCabe hadn’t sat on the Weiner emails, it might have decreased Hillary’s winning vote total by a million or so votes?
No but Josh has suggested that this somehow will be re-purposed to help Trump. I am not sure that I agree with Josh because Trump won due to the Comey letter. The bigger question for me is who leaked this to Giuliani? He was all over it.
Everything is upside down and sideways and McCabe -the scapegoat- is gone. Comey is also gone.
So I’m trying to figure this out. Wasn’t Comey’s blatant disregard of DoJ guidelines regarding politically-motivated announcements ostensibly one of the strikes against him? And now McCabe’s failure to make a politically-motivated announcement is a count against him?
It does kinda seem as if the IG may have been captured by the new york office sleeper agents.
Fires James “I’m handing you the election” Comey for “the Russia thing” but also how he handled “the emails.” Hastens McCabe’s departure for almost not handing him the election by making the decision to not rush to judgement about Abedin’s emails. It’s a very confusing time.
Unreal. My mother is 90 years old, she was in a movie theater when she heard the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. She told me she’s never feared more for this country than she does right now.