A trio of Republicans are questioning the validity of the Justice Department’s inspector general’s forthcoming final report on the DOJ and FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails, raising concerns about the possibility that the findings may have been tainted.
The close allies of President Trump — Reps. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., and Matt Gaetz, R-Fla. — publicized that they sent a letter to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz on Thursday, only hours before the final report was to be released.
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[Washington braces for inspector general report on Clinton’s emails]
“Your team has worked to ensure that this report is thorough and accurate; however, an investigation of this magnitude and consequence deserves heightened scrutiny to guarantee that the process has not been compromised in any way,” the three lawmakers wrote.
IG FALLOUT: Clearest sign that Trump allies didn’t get what they wanted out of the IG report: his top GOP allies are arguing that the report may have been watered down during the review process –> pic.twitter.com/gFL9k7kjf2
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) June 14, 2018
Both the Justice Department and FBI were provided with the opportunity to rebut the report’s findings before the final details were publicized, which the lawmakers warned could have allowed people to have “changed the report in a way that obfuscates your findings.”
The pre-emptive strike against the report came as first details from Horowitz’s conclusions emerged, including that former FBI Director James Comey was not motivated by political bias.
“While we did not find that these decisions were the result of political bias on Comey’s part, we nevertheless concluded that by departing so clearly and dramatically from FBI and department norms, the decisions negatively impacted the perception of the FBI and the department as fair administrators of justice,” Horowitz said in the report’s conclusions.
