WASHINGTON -- Former FBI Director James Comey was "insubordinate" in his handling of the investigation of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election, a Justice Department report concluded Thursday.
But the report, by the department's inspector general, Michael Horowitz, does not challenge the decision not to prosecute Clinton. Nor does it conclude that political bias at the FBI influenced that decision, the officials said.
"We found no evidence that the conclusions by department prosecutors were affected by bias or other improper considerations," the report said. "Rather, we concluded that they were based on the prosecutor's assessment of facts, the law, and past department practice."
The report has been highly anticipated in Washington, not least by President Donald Trump, who has argued that a secret coterie of FBI agents rigged the investigation to help Clinton win the presidency. The findings cite no evidence to support that theory.
Nevertheless, the report paints an unflattering picture of one of the most tumultuous periods in the 110-year history of the FBI, when agents investigated Clinton's use of a private email server to store classified information and the Trump campaign's connections to Russia.
The report criticizes the conduct of FBI officials who exchanged texts disparaging Trump during the campaign. The officials, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, were involved in both the Clinton and Russia investigations, leading Trump's supporters to suspect a conspiracy against him. Many of those text messages have been released, but the inspector general cites a previously undisclosed message in which Strzok says the FBI "will stop" Trump, according to two of the officials.
The inspector general said that, because of his views, Strzok may have improperly prioritized the Russia investigation over the Clinton investigation during the final weeks of the campaign. The FBI officials "brought discredit" to themselves and sowed public doubt about the investigation. But the report did not cite evidence that Strzok had acted improperly or influenced the outcome of the investigation, the officials said.
"Our review did not find documentary or testimonial evidence directly connecting the political views these employees expressed in their text messages and instant messages to the specific investigative decisions we reviewed," the report said.
"The president was briefed on the IG report earlier today, and it reaffirmed the president's suspicions about Comey's conduct and the political bias among some of the members of the FBI," White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said of the 500-page report.
The findings sharply criticize the judgment of Comey, who injected the FBI into presidential politics in ways not seen since at least the Watergate era.
Comey held a news conference in July 2016 to announce that he was recommending no charges against Clinton and to publicly chastise her email practices. It was highly unorthodox; the Justice Department, not the FBI, makes charging decisions. And officials have been reprimanded for injecting their opinions into legal conclusions. Comey withheld his plans for a public statement from his bosses at the Justice Department.
"It was extraordinary and insubordinate for Comey to do so," the inspector general wrote, "and we found none of his reasons to be a persuasive basis for deviating from well-established department policies in a way intentionally designed to avoid supervision by department leadership."
Then in late October, over the objection of top Justice Department officials, Comey sent a letter to Congress disclosing that agents were scrutinizing new evidence in the Clinton case. That evidence did not change the outcome of the inquiry, but Clinton and many of her supporters blame Comey's late disclosure for her defeat.
The report found a "troubling lack of any direct, substantive communication" between Comey and Attorney General Loretta Lynch ahead of Comey's July press conference on Clinton and his October letter to Congress.
"We found it extraordinary that, in advance of two such consequential decisions, the FBI director decided that the best course of conduct was to not speak directly and substantively with the attorney general about how best to navigate those decisions."
Comey has defended his actions, saying he would have faced criticism for any decision, so he opted to be transparent. FBI officials have acknowledged that they made those decisions in part because they assumed Clinton would win, and they worried about appearing to conceal information to help her.
Comey has said he was concerned that the Justice Department itself could not credibly announce the conclusion of its investigation, in part because Lynch had met earlier in the summer aboard her plane with former President Bill Clinton. Both said they did not discuss Hillary Clinton's case.
Concerned about the "appearance that former President Clinton was influencing" the probe, Lynch began talking to her staff the next morning about possibly recusing herself from overseeing the investigation, according to the report. She told the inspector general she decided not to step aside because it might "create a misimpression" that she and the former president had discussed inappropriate things.
Bill Clinton, who was also interviewed in the inspector general investigation, said he had "absolutely not" discussed the email probe.
COMEY'S FIRING
Officially at least, Comey's handling of the Clinton case cost him his job. As justification for firing him last year, the White House pointed to a Justice Department memo that criticized many of the same actions now highlighted by the inspector general. In that regard, the inspector general would seem to underscore the stated reason for Comey's dismissal.
But Trump has muddied this issue. Within hours of the firing, he undercut his own staff and said that he had planned to fire Comey even before the Justice Department made its recommendation. He said he had been thinking about the Russia investigation when he fired Comey. His lawyer added that Comey was fired for refusing to publicly exonerate Trump in the Russia case.
The FBI said in a statement included in the inspector general's report that Comey's handling of the Clinton findings may have violated regulations on releasing information and that his letter disclosing reopening of the inquiry shortly before the election "was a serious error in judgment."
The bureau also said it accepts findings "that certain text messages, instant messages and statements, along with a failure to consistently apply DOJ and FBI interview policies, were inappropriate and created an appearance that political bias might have improperly influenced investigative actions or decisions."
Comey wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times in which he said he disagreed with some conclusions but respected the watchdog's work.
Zeroing in on the evidence of anti-Trump sentiment, Rep. Darrell Issa of California said "it appears as though all or most of the 39 people who were tangentially involved had a bias toward believing they were going to work for Hillary Clinton -- and as a result didn't have the guts to take on wrongdoing."
Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement that "any effort to use this report as an excuse for shutting down Special Counsel [Robert] Mueller's investigation is both disingenuous and dangerous. Nothing in this report detracts from the credibility and critical importance of the Special Counsel's investigation."
FBI Director Christopher Wray, responding to the report at a news conference Thursday afternoon, said, "Nothing in this report impugns the integrity of our workforce as a whole, or the FBI as an institution."
He added that the report contained "sobering lessons" and "we are going to learn from those lessons." The bureau, he said, would begin training sessions for all its employees, "drilling home the importance of objectivity." The sessions would also emphasize avoiding improper contacts with the news media.
The inspector general released a report in April finding that Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe lacked candor on four different occasions regarding interactions with the media, including providing information to a news reporter about the FBI's investigation into the foundation created by Hillary and Bill Clinton. The inspector general has referred the matter to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia for further investigation.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions relied on the report to fire McCabe only hours before he was set to retire and qualify for his full government pension. McCabe and his lawyer have adamantly contested the allegations.
The inspector general also has opened a separate review into whether the Justice Department and FBI followed appropriate procedures in obtaining a secret warrant to conduct surveillance on former Trump campaign aide Carter Page in late 2016 and early 2017.
Information for this article was contributed by Matt Apuzzo, Nicholas Fandos and Charlie Savage of The New York Times; by Chris Strohm, Jennifer Epstein, Jennifer Jacobs, Billy House, Justin Sink and Steven T. Dennis of Bloomberg News; and by Eric Tucker, Chad Day, Mary Clare Jalonick, Steve Braun and Colleen Long of The Associated Press.
A Section on 06/15/2018