Justice IG: The FBI Lies When It Cries

Officials lied to reporters when they said the FBI suspected a nonprofit group held for months inappropriate emails between Mark Foley and a former teenage page, before turning them over to investigators, according to a new report.

At the height of the Foley scandal this summer, quotes from anonymous “law enforcement” officials surfaced in news accounts alleging that Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) had first received copies of the infamous Foley emails in April 2006, but did not turn them over to the FBI until July.

But a new report from the Justice Department’s internal watchdog confirms that was not the case. In fact, “the e-mails were provided to CREW in July 2006, not April, and CREW sent them to the FBI within days of receiving them,” the office of Justice Inspector General Glenn A. Fine reported.

Unfortunately, “we do not know who may have supplied the media with this inaccurate information,” Fine’s report stated. (You can find the full report here.)

CREW had disputed the allegation from the day it was made. “They’re making it up. There’s no question about it,” CREW spokeswoman Naomi Seligman-Steiner told TPMmuckraker October 6, the day the Washington Post‘s Dan Eggen reported that the FBI believed CREW had sat on the emails for months, according to a “law enforcement official — speaking on condition of anonymity.”

Fine’s office concluded that the FBI’s decision not to investigate the emails was not “misconduct,” but “should have raised enough concerns to warrant some action.” At the very least, the report concludes, agents should have notified the House Page program.

Politics were not an issue in the FBI’s decisionmaking process, Fine’s report said.