If you missed it last night in the run up to the speech, please take a moment to read my backgrounder post about the Inspector General’s investigation into the FBI’s handling of the Clinton emails probe in 2016. Big picture: what began as a probe into James Comey’s at best botched final-week intervention into the campaign appears to have been repurposed into a probe into whether the FBI didn’t intervene enough. It’s like entering bizarro world. Very troubling stuff. Take a look (Prime access).
It’s not entirely clear to me whether The Washington Post report on this gives us a full view of what the IG investigation looks like or whether they’re perhaps relying on interested or misleading accounts. But I could not help but noting that this morning on CNN the Post’s report that the Inspector General is examining claims that Andrew McCabe slow-rolled the reopening of the Clinton probe in the last weeks of the election has morphed into the Inspector General says flatly that this did happen.
Watch this video.
This is wild. CNN host actually dramatically overstates what Post story said, which is itself fairly skewed. He didn’t say McCabe did this. It says some make that claim and he’s investigating it. Also makes zero mention of DOJ guidelines abt election non-interference. pic.twitter.com/VwF88gJCM5
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) January 31, 2018
This is a highly important dimension of the full story unfolding now at DOJ, the FBI and the Mueller probe. On its face the Inspector General is an independent investigator. It is important to note that this particular Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, appears to be a respected lawyer and was appointed in 2012. So there’s little basis for thinking that he came to this investigation as some kind of a Trump loyalist. But when the Attorney General and the Director of the FBI are repeatedly enabling the President’s interference in the administration of justice, even as they simultaneously try to restrain his worst tendencies, you simply cannot take anything at face value. This needs to be watched very, very closely.
We’re doing further reporting on various dimensions of this. Expect more from us soon.
