The leaks came quickly after Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz announced his long-awaited report on alleged government surveillance abuses against a member of the Trump campaign would be released in a matter of weeks.
Contrary to the allegations often trumpeted by President Trump and his allies, reports from outlets such as the Washington Post and New York Times said the watchdog is expected to find political bias did not taint the Russia investigation, absolving top officials such as former FBI Director James Comey, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and special agent Peter Strzok on this matter.
Yes, missteps and lapses in judgment were made, but the most damning revelation pertains to an FBI lawyer, identified as Kevin Clinesmith, allegedly altering a document related to the wiretapping of onetime Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. A far cry from the “premeditated fraud” conspiracy pushed on a near-nightly basis by Fox News host Sean Hannity, Horowitz’s investigators determined Clinesmith’s actions did not taint the overall validity of a renewal application. Additionally, Horowitz determined the opening of the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign in July 2016 was justified.
None of this amounts to what Trump’s closest allies have hyped up for months: a concerted effort to monitor and undermine his 2016 campaign, particularly with how the FBI relied on an unverified dossier compiled by British ex-spy Christopher Steele to obtain the warrants to wiretap Page.
Democrats, fully engaged in an impeachment effort against Trump, have expressed little appetite to talk about Horowitz’s report and counter Republican allegations of an effort to overthrow the president. “It looks like the evidence is going to show otherwise. It’s time for us to move on,” Rep. Eric Swalwell, a Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, said on Fox News Sunday.
Yet the dearth of evidence speaking to the existence of a “deep state” plot, coupled with the towering impeachment case against the president, has done little to discourage Trump’s staunchest defenders.
After all, Trump himself said on Friday he has heard Horowitz’s report will be “historic,” and former acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker speculated Friday that the president “has certainly been briefed on it by Attorney General [William] Barr at this point.”
So what is going on?
Jason Chaffetz has an idea. During a Fox News appearance on Saturday, the former Republican congressman accused the media of attempting to “diminish” what Trump said about the report. Other Trump allies, including Hannity, have suggested a concerted effort by subjects of the investigation to “get ahead” of the the report’s publication.
Steve Bannon, who was Trump’s chief campaign executive and chief strategist in the White House, said the leaks show “how nervous they are.”
“When they are leaking a report two-and-a-half or three weeks in advance and to try to get ahead of the story, ‘Oh nothing to see, let’s move on, it’s just some lower-level functionaries.’ That is not going to wash,” Bannon said on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures.
Horowitz confirmed on Thursday that he expects his final report to be released to the public on Dec. 9 and is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee two days later. By the end of the night, reports surfaced about Horowitz’s findings, including that Horowitz made a criminal referral to U.S. Attorney John Durham about the lawyer who was later identified as Clinesmith. Durham is conducting a criminal investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation.
These initial reports cast the FBI lawyer as a low-level employee, but Clinesmith was an attorney with the FBI’s National Security and Cyber Law Branch and worked under then-FBI General Counsel James Baker and Deputy General Counsel Trisha Anderson. Clinesmith had worked on the Clinton email investigation, as well as special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. He was kicked off the latter case after Horowitz discovered he expressed negative opinions of Trump in messages to colleagues, including one that said, “Viva le resistance.”
All the reports that emerged Thursday and Friday are based on sources familiar with a draft of the inspector general’s report, which has prompted some caution among those asked to comment. Even former CIA Director John Brennan, a vocal Trump critic who some believe could be criticized in the report, said he would reserve judgment.
“This report, supposedly, that Horowitz is going to come forward with, if there was some type of modification, the question is when was it done, why was it done,” Brennan said Friday on MSNBC, referring to the situation with Clinesmith. “And so the IG reports usually will take a very close look and use a microscope to look at these things, but I think we just have to wait for it to come out to determine exactly whether or not there was any wrongdoing whatsoever or whether or not there were just some things that happened that, you know, might not have been exactly the way they should have taken place.”
One person already criticizing Horowitz is Page himself. Although he was at the epicenter of Horowitz’s investigation, Page claimed on Friday that he’s had “zero ability” to review the report or provide any feedback or corrections compared to those people he believes are behind the leaks.
“Unfortunately, the way that this inspector general report has been assembled and completed over the last couple of years and particularly over the last few months is completely sloppy,” Page told CNN on Saturday. “It’s only one side’s perspective.”
Whitaker said he expects “one of the more consequential inspector general reports we’ve seen in probably the last two decades.” Referring to the contentious political debate hovering over Mueller’s investigation and the Page-FISA controversy, Whitaker added that he hopes the watchdog report’s disclosure will “begin the process of a restoration of confidence in the Department of Justice and the FBI.”
