The DOJ IG Michael Horowitz’s report on James Comey’s actions during the 2016 presidential election is about to be released and the rumors are that it takes Comey to task for his actions. Horowitz has been investigating Comey’s actions on the illegal server used by Hillary when she was Secretary of State. This particular report is just about the presidential election and does not include the other various crimes or unethical actions Comey has committed.
Particularly, the investigation found that Comey’s July 5th announcement on the Hillary investigation was against FBI protocol. Horowitz has been investigating both complaints by Republicans and Democrats.
The report is a double-edged sword for the Democrats. They have been defending Comey as a great public servant who was fired by Trump in an effort to obstruct justice. But the IG has been investigating complaints from those very same Democrats and that could ruin the new narrative they have been pushing. It’s almost a lose/lose situation for them. If the report shows the investigation was mishandled by Comey, his duplicity will be revealed and they can no longer say Comey was a good public servant who didn’t deserve to be fired.
It is not yet known if the report will cover all of the complaints about how the FBI conducted the investigation or whether that will be in the final IG report. That report is expected by early June.
TIME reported:
The Justice Department’s Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, will soon release a much-anticipated assessment of Democratic and Republican charges that officials at the FBI interfered in the 2016 presidential campaign. That year-long probe, sources familiar with it tell TIME, is expected to come down particularly hard on former FBI director James Comey, who is currently on a high-profile book tour.
It will likely find that Comey breached Justice Department protocols in a July 5, 2016, press conference when he criticized Hillary Clinton for using a private email server as Secretary of State even as he cleared her of any crimes, the sources say. The report is expected to also hit Comey for the way he reopened the Clinton email probe less than two weeks before the election, the sources say.