A long-awaited watchdog report sharply criticized top officials at the Justice Department and FBI, particularly former FBI Director James Comey, over how they handled the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server, but found no evidence that the probe's conclusions were affected by bias or other political considerations.* * *"Departing so clearly and dramatically from FBI and Department norms, [Director Comey's] decisions negatively impacted the perception of the FBI and the Department as fair administrators of justice," the report concluded.* * *In a text Mr. Strzok sent to Ms. Page two months earlier, which was recently unearthed by the inspector general, the agent said he would "stop" Mr. Trump from being elected. The FBI employees repeatedly disparaged Mr. Trump, even calling him a "douche," in text messages spanning 2015 through 2017 that were obtained by the inspector general.
"Under these circumstances, we did not have confidence that Strzok's decision to prioritize the Russia investigation over following up on the Midyear-related investigative lead on the Weiner laptop was free from bias," the report concluded.
That last statement has a commanding lead for Understatement of the Year. For a high-ranking official of the FBI to state a specific intent to alter the outcome of a presidential election does considerably more than negate confidence of lack of bias.
Decencyevolves: Strzok's email was certainly inappropriate. His statement, "we'll stop it" was ambiguous and certainly could mean "we (voters like you and me) will stop it" as opposed to "we (as FBI agents) will stop it." The IG's findings are crucial here:
"We found that Strzok was not the sole decisionmaker for any of the specific investigative decisions examined in this chapter. We further found evidence that in some instances Strzok and Page advocated for more aggressive investigative measures than did others...however, we did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that improper considerations, including political bias, directly affected the specific investigative decisions discussed below, or that the justifications offered for these decisions were pretextual."
That's quite a stretch to create ambiguity where there really isn't any.
Decencyevolves: Yes. The IGs report justifiably condemned Strzol’s statements, although he found no evidence that it affected the FBi’s investigation or the two campaigns. The IG also found that Comey violated FBI policy to prioritize his own institutional interests as head of the FBI over the effects of his disclosures on the campaign. He did this in a way that was deeply dangerous to the candidacy of Hillary Clinton when he (1) issued harshly negative comments on her email practices while recommending against prosecution in July 2016, and (2) publicly announced the reopening of the email investigation on the eve of the election. The FBI’s actions negatively affected one candidate: Hillary Clinton, not Donald Trump. As with so many things, when this Administration complains of harm or corruption, we see a funhouse mirror reflection of reality.
John Harwood, reporting for CNBC, put it this way: “To sum up: Justice Dept Inspector General concluded that bias did NOT affect Clinton email investigation, that FBI had PROPER reasons for declining to prosecute her, and that the only improper actions influencing 2016 election were actions that damaged Clinton, not Trump.”
Comments cannot be fairly characterized as "harshly" negative when they are less negative than the offense warrants.
If I were compiling a dictionary of American politics with examples, Harwood's "sum up" would be the perfect example for the entry on "spin."
As I said at the top of the post, the report is a mixed bag. People claiming it as full confirmation for the Democrats' view of the matters in question are projecting "a funhouse mirror reflection of reality" every bit as much as the Administration.