A couple of weeks ago, the U.S. Justice Department’s Inspector General’s office released its much-anticipated report about the Hillary Clinton email scandal under this title: “A Review of Various Actions by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Justice in Advance of the 2016 Election.”
Last week, the U.S. Senate’s Judiciary Committee held a hearing and questioned both the Inspector General Michael Horowitz and the current FBI Director Christopher Wray about the report.
Congressional committees in the U.S. House and Senate can at times be boring, contentious, informative, and even humorous. Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana used a little humor (and sarcasm) to make a point while questioning Inspector General Michael Horowitz:
Sen. Kennedy: General, do you believe in the Tooth Fairy?
IG Horowitz: Nope.
Sen. Kennedy: Do you believe in the Easter Bunny?
IG Horowitz: Nope.
Sen. Kennedy: Do you believe that Jimmy Hoffa died of natural causes?
IG Horowitz: Not based on what I’ve read.
Then Senator Kennedy got to his point:
Sen. Kennedy: Do you honestly believe that the American people are going to look at this report and look at those emails and not believe that there was bias and people acting on bias and that the fix was in at the FBI?
Sen. Kennedy was referring to a string of emails and text messages he had just read showing obvious bias towards candidate and President Donald Trump.
Here are a few of the emails and text messages from senior FBI officials that Sen. Kennedy read:
Peter Strzok: “Bernie Sanders is an idiot like Trump.”
Lisa Page: “I’m no prude but I’m really appalled by this, so you don’t go looking in case you haven’t heard Trump called him the P word. The man has no dignity or class he simply cannot be President.”
Peter Strzok: “Oh Trump’s abysmal I keep hoping this raid will end and people will just dump him. The problem then is Rubio will likely lose the Cruz.
Lisa Page: “God Trump is a loathsome human being.
Peter Strzok: “Oh my god Trump is an idiot.”
Sen. Kennedy read others that were worse. You can watch the entire exchange here.
It’s easy to imagine the outrage if FBI senior officials were saying similar things about Barack Obama in 2008.
We are living through an amazing episode of high level governmental corruption revealed. And it’s an unfortunate drama that has been unfolding since President Donald Trump took the oath of office.
Another short video you may want to watch is Congressman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) questioning Horowitz from the U.S. House hearing on the report — you can find it here.
As always, conservative commentators have produced a slew of op eds analyzing the IG’s report. Here are just three examples from sources where many other articles on the topic are posted:
The Federalist:
IG Report Shows James Comey Lied About Why He Publicized New Clinton Emails
The inspector general’s direct answer whether James Comey lied was curious, in that his conclusion conflicts with facts and testimony detailed in his own report.
American Thinker:
Buried in IG report, shocking revelations about Clinton emails found on Weiner’s laptop
The issues surrounding Hillary Clinton’s emails just won’t go away, and the recently released DoJ inspector general’s report shows why.
National Review:
The IG’s Report May Be Half-Baked
But who knows?
In this last article, Andrew C. McCarthy sums things up from his point of view:
How do you best evaluate the FBI’s approach to the Clinton case? Well, if I may invoke that term again, common sense says you look at how the same agents handled another case which bore on the same event that informed their every decision, the 2016 election.
The question is not whether every Clinton-case decision was defensible considered in isolation; it is whether the quality of justice afforded to two sides of the same continuum by the same agents at the same time was . . . the same.
It wasn’t. One was kid gloves, the other was scorched earth. The candidate they hoped would win got the former; the candidate they needed to “stop” got the latter. The candidate they were almost certain would win got the case dropped; the candidate they needed an “insurance policy” against . . . well, whaddya know — the case against him is still going . . . and going . . . and going.
As with all of these “learning moment” scandals, all that remains to be seen is how many Americans are reached with the facts, and how many GOP elected officials and candidates do their part to disseminate the truth.
