Moments after Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s long-anticipated report on the FBI’s inquiry into Russian election-meddling was made public, the gnashing of teeth from competing camps determined to weaponize the mixed bag of results became deafening. Insufferable partisan opportunists repeated their sad performances that followed the release of the Mueller report. It has become de rigueur in our deeply fractured nation: Highlight what makes your partisan case, while conveniently ignoring what undercuts your own argument. Balance has become a quaint relic of bygone times.
But to fair observers of the facts, there were no undisputed winners uncovered by Horowitz’s investigation. President Trump, whose recent high-octane tease in a Fox & Friends interview that “what you’re going to see, I predict, will be perhaps the biggest scandal in the history of our country, political scandal,” was unequivocally wrong. He completely overplayed what could have been considered a fairly strong hand — “You have a FISA report coming out, which the word is, it’s historic, that’s what the word is. That’s what I hear.”
Thus, Trump helped contribute to a mismanagement of expectations.
The political left, of course, performed their own poorly timed touchdown dance, spiking the football with a report that highlighted damning criticisms of the FBI’s abuse of the FISA process. Horowitz cited 17 egregious factual errors and omissions in the Carter Page application. Page, you will recall, was the Naval Academy graduate cum petroleum industry consultant who had the misfortune of serving for a brief period as a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign.
Opponents of the president can hardly contain their glee over Horowitz’s ultimate finding that political bias from Crossfire Hurricane investigators did not affect the overall justifiable predication for opening the investigation. FBI investigations require a fairly low threshold for approval. But the FBI is also dutybound to close investigations once an investigative theory has been disproven, or when exculpatory evidence comes to light.
That didn’t happen here.
Trump-hating consumers of the report, including some FBI apologists, are seemingly undeterred by the fact that the inspector general noted that the identified errors and omissions in the Page application and renewals were the result of FBI agents “providing wrong or incomplete information.” From my experience in drafting and reviewing electronic surveillance applications, innocent mistakes can occur. Human beings are quintessentially fallible.
But what should be most unsettling for the victory lap crew is this – the Horowitz team noted that they failed to receive “satisfactory explanations for the errors or problems we identified.”
Another item conveniently ignored by the settled-verdict victors is this – Horowitz, as the Justice Department’s inspector general, does not possess subpoena powers. In other words, he cannot compel any witness outside of DOJ to cooperate or be interviewed. This is not the case with U.S. Attorney John Durham, tasked by the attorney general to review the origins of the Russia investigation.
In a fairly odd move for a chief prosecutor in an investigation yet to be concluded, Durham released a statement on Monday disagreeing with Horowitz’s findings.
Durham’s contention is that his investigation “has included developing information from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside of the U.S.” Durham’s inquiry has already led to at least one criminal referral.
Kevin Clinesmith, a former attorney who worked at FBI headquarters, has been identified as having altered an email related to the third and final FISA renewal on Page. Clinesmith, no longer with the FBI, is not in the report by name, instead identified as “Supervisory Special Agent 2.” He is accused of covering up previous FBI errors by purposely not notifying the FISA court that Carter Page had previously served as a source for another government agency. Page, in fact, had been engaged in a prior relationship with the CIA.
Clinesmith, like the more ubiquitous partisan-text-exchangers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page (no relation to Carter Page), had reacted to news of Trump’s election with “Viva le resistance,” and expressed support for Hillary Clinton in exchanges with another FBI employee.
That is why Horowitz’s contention that there existed no impact from politically motivated bias in Crossfire Hurricane is at odds with the facts. As the Daily Caller’s Chuck Ross pointed out: “It’s not so much that the FBI opened up an investigation on the Trump campaign. The bar is low. It’s that the FBI buried information that should otherwise have warranted ending the investigation much earlier than it was.”
It’s not so much that the FBI opened up an investigation on the Trump campaign. The bar is low. It’s that the FBI buried information that should otherwise have warranted ending the investigation much earlier than it was.
— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) December 10, 2019
The most likely reason why Durham took such an unprecedented step in announcing his investigation’s findings to date is that they contradict the inspector general’s findings on bias. When the dust is settled on Durham’s investigation, backed by the subpoena power that Horowitz lacks, the Trump opponents celebrating the Horowitz findings may find themselves with an egg or two on their faces.
James A. Gagliano (@JamesAGagliano) worked in the FBI for 25 years. He is a law enforcement analyst for CNN and an adjunct assistant professor in homeland security and criminal justice at St. John’s University.
