An announcement Thursday that Michael Horowitz, inspector general for the Department of Justice, would lead a far-reaching probe into how officials at the Justice Department and the FBI handled an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails resurrected a controversy that many Democrats had blamed for the loss of their candidate in the presidential race.
The year-long criminal investigation of Clinton’s private email network — and whether it compromised classified information from her tenure at the State Department — rankled Republicans and Democrats alike, both in the perfunctory way agents pursued it and the public way the FBI director closed it.
But neither side has gotten answers as to why the probe seemingly deviated from procedure at almost every turn.
In a brief statement revealing the new probe on Thursday, Horowitz suggested the Justice Department’s watchdog team would investigate grievances raised by lawmakers and interest groups from both parties.
Matthew Whitaker, executive director of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust and a former U.S. attorney, said many aspects of the Clinton email case were “unusual” from the start.
“I think that’s a fine development,” Whitaker told the Washington Examiner of the watchdog’s decision to pursue an investigation. “In my experience, inspectors general are very nonpartisan and very level-headed, so I don’t think there will be any kind of wild conclusions or any kind of partisan-based directions taken.”
With the election season over and so much material to review, the inspector general will be in no rush to publish a report, Whitaker noted.
“I don’t think it’s going to go quickly,” he said.
Here are the five allegations under investigation by the Justice Department inspector general:
“Allegations that Department or FBI policies or procedures were not followed in connection with, or in actions leading up to or related to, the FBI Director’s public announcement on July 5, 2016, and the Director’s letters to Congress on October 28 and November 6, 2016, and that certain underlying investigative decisions were based on improper considerations.”
Democrats have excoriated FBI Director James Comey for revealing so many details about Clinton’s misconduct when announcing his decision not to recommend charges against the former secretary of state during a July 5 press conference. Comey called her actions “extremely careless” and listed off some of the ways Clinton and her staff had erred, such as by deleting thousands of work-related emails that were never provided to the government and by transmitting dozens of emails that were classified at the time they were sent.
The FBI director hadn’t cleared the press conference with the Justice Department because, four days earlier, the attorney general had stated her intention to accept Comey’s indictment recommendations, whatever they might be.
Whitaker said Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s decision to give Comey “prosecutorial discretion” was a prime example of the irregularities surrounding the Clinton email case.
What’s more, Lynch had only removed herself from the decision-making process after suffering a fierce backlash over her private meeting with Clinton’s husband aboard her jet just a few days before agents interviewed Clinton and closed the case.
The inspector general vowed to look into the circumstances involved in the initial conclusion of the Clinton email investigation.
He also vowed to look into the reasons why Comey reopened that investigation on Oct. 28, when he sent a letter to members of Congress informing them that, in accordance with a pledge to keep lawmakers abreast of any changes to the case that he had issued under oath two months earlier, he planned to reopen the probe.
While Comey did not elaborate on the reasons why in his letter, subsequent reporting revealed that emails discovered on a laptop shared by Huma Abedin, Clinton’s closest aide, and Anthony Weiner, who was under FBI investigation for unrelated allegations of sexual misconduct, contained potentially classified information.
Clinton’s allies quickly accused Comey of impropriety and even bias. Their outrage continued unabated when, on Nov. 6, the FBI director sent a second letter closing the case once again.
But the inspector general statement also noted that his office intends to probe whether “certain underlying investigative decisions were based on improper considerations.” That aspect of the watchdog probe is likely to please supporters of President-elect Trump.
Republicans balked at details of the case as they emerged through document disclosures in the weeks before the election, repeatedly yet unsuccessfully calling on Comey to explain how the bureau could have failed to charge Clinton given what agents uncovered.
For example, the FBI prompted particularly harsh criticism for requesting and receiving five separate immunity deals for witnesses involved in mishandling emails. The deals prevented agents from using some of their most damaging findings against Clinton’s senior aides, two of whom were also serving as her lawyers in the case.
Critics questioned why the FBI determined that seemingly evasive actions, such as the Clinton camp’s efforts to destroy emails using a digital deletion tool called BleachBit in the days after the public learned about their private server, did not merit further investigation.
“Allegations that the FBI Deputy Director should have been recused from participating in certain investigative matters.”
FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe came under heavy fire in October when reports surfaced that suggested his wife had received campaign donations from a top Clinton ally shortly before McCabe took a position that gave him oversight of the Clinton email probe.
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a longtime friend of the Clintons, had steered money to the unsuccessful state senate bid of McCabe’s wife.
Even so, McCabe may have continued to participate in matters related to the Clinton email probe.
“Allegations that the Department’s Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs improperly disclosed non-public information to the Clinton campaign and/or should have been recused from participating in certain matters.”
Peter Kadzik, the assistant attorney general, had a close personal relationship with Clinton campaign chair John Podesta while he corresponded with members of Congress about the investigation into Clinton.
Emails made public through WikiLeaks show Kadzik wrote to Podesta during the email controversy to provide him a “heads up” about upcoming testimony and court filings that might affect Clinton.
The hacked emails showed Podesta and Kadzik had been friendly for years. In a 2008 email, for example, Podesta joked that Kadzik had “kept me out of jail.”
Now, the inspector general will look into whether Kadzik should have removed himself from a case that so closely involved a longtime friend, and whether Kadzik funneled secret information to Podesta during the campaign.
“Allegations that Department and FBI employees improperly disclosed non-public information.”
Other emails exposed by WikiLeaks showed additional coordination between the Justice Department and the Clinton campaign.
Brian Fallon, a former Justice Department spokesman who had joined Clinton’s campaign as a press secretary, said in one hacked message that “DOJ folks” had tipped him off to an upcoming court hearing in an email case.
The agency’s internal watchdog will examiner whether coordination between investigators, prosecutors and Clinton’s team went beyond Kadzik’s potentially inappropriate relationship with Podesta.
“Allegations that decisions regarding the timing of the FBI’s release of certain Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) documents on October 30 and November 1, 2016, and the use of a Twitter account to publicize same, were influenced by improper considerations.”
The FBI sparked outrage when, on Nov. 1, it published 129 pages of documents from its 2001 investigation of the Marc Rich pardon and used its official Twitter account to publicize the disclosure.
The Marc Rich pardon occurred at the conclusion of Bill Clinton’s presidency, when he issued an eleventh-hour pardon to the fugitive financier and Democratic donor under dubious circumstances.
Although the FBI released the documents under the Freedom of Information Act, critics questioned the timing of their release within one week of the election and the fact that the bureau had used social media to promote the records.
