Ed Brodow: Horowitz, Comey and Mueller Share the Same Guilt

By Ed Brodow:

I’m always looking for patterns in the news. A good one just popped up in my line of fire. DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, former FBI Director James Comey, and former Special Counsel Robert Mueller are guilty of the same offense: using their positions to attack political opponents or to protect political allies. They have been animated by political bias combined with an allergy to the facts.

Let’s start with Comey. On July 5, 2016, FBI Director Comey made a widely publicized statement about Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail system during her time as secretary of state. He concluded that Clinton violated the statute pertaining to the handling of classified information. The federal statute, he said, “makes it a felony to mishandle classified information either intentionally or in a grossly negligent way.” Clinton and her staff did exactly that, Comey said. “There is evidence,” he acknowledged, “that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.” Although everyone was expecting him to recommend prosecution after such a detailed summary of Clinton’s abuses, Comey weaseled his way out by changing “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless” in order to subvert the statute. He also ignored the fact that the statute does not require intent.

“Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information,” Comey concluded, “our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.” In other words, Clinton was guilty but Comey was giving her a pass. She was “careless,” but she didn’t really mean it. Comey clearly was protecting Hillary and allowing his political bias to influence his conclusions. The facts be damned.

Robert Mueller followed suit. After two years of exhaustive investigation by his team of Trump haters, despite the assumption by most of the media that Trump was guilty, Mueller admitted that he found no evidence that Trump colluded with the Russians. That should have been the end of it, but instead Mueller left the impression that Trump may have obstructed justice. His political bias against Trump was obvious from the outset. When he failed to give his liberal friends the outcome they hoped for, he inserted his shameful opinion into the report with the vague suggestion that Trump probably was guilty of something or other.

IG Horowitz followed Comey’s lead this week when he said in his long-awaited report that the FBI committed a laundry list of offenses but it’s not a problem because they weren’t motivated by political animus. Horowitz’s team uncovered 17 “significant errors or omissions” by the FBI as it investigated allegations against the president. The report sharply criticized the FBI for its clandestine surveillance of Trump supporter Carter Page and others. In spite of illegal spying on US citizens, Horowitz said his investigators found no intentional misconduct or political bias by FBI officials. According to the report, the FBI had ample evidence to open its investigation—a conclusion that is contradicted by the revelation that the investigation was triggered by the phony Steele dossier. The dossier’s lack of authenticity was never acknowledged by the FBI.

Attorney General William Barr and federal prosecutor John Durham have criticized the Horowitz report. “The FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a US presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken,” Barr said. Reading between the lines of the Horowitz report, it appears that senior officials in the FBI intended to sabotage Trump and held no punches in their effort to take him down. Sorry Mr. Horowitz, that is called political bias.

Sen. Lindsey Graham delivered a scathing attack on the Horowitz report. “What’s been described as a few irregularities becomes a massive criminal conspiracy over time to defraud the FISA court, to illegally surveil an American citizen and keep an investigation open against a sitting president of the United States, violating every norm known to the rule of law,” Graham said. He compared it to the old FBI. “People at the highest level of our government took the law into their own hands. It was as if J. Edgar Hoover came back to life,” Graham declared.

Barr and Durham are expected to bring criminal charges in the aftermath of the DOJ/FBI scandal. Let’s hope they include prosecution of Horowitz, Comey, and Mueller ƒor their significant roles in this mess.