The Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General reportedly found that former FBI Director James Comey at times defied his superiors while leading the bureau.
ABC News reported that a draft report from the department’s internal watchdog described Comey’s behavior as “insubordinate.” Sources told the outlet that the draft report also criticized former Attorney General Loretta Lynch for her handling of the probe into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.
The forthcoming report from the Justice Department’s internal watchdog is expected to detail the missteps from the FBI and Justice Department during the Clinton email investigation.
The report is expected to be lengthy, at several hundred pages long, and come in the near future.
The draft report referenced by ABC News, however, could have been revised as current and former officials referenced in it may have responded to the watchdog’s findings, sources told the outlet.
In the draft report from Inspector General Michael Horowitz, Comey was criticized for ignoring concerns from the Department of Justice when he told Congress in a letter just before the 2016 election that the FBI had reopened the investigation into Clinton’s use of her private email server.
The investigation was reopened after emails were discovered by FBI agents on the laptop belonging to former Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., who was married to top Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
Clinton has attributed her loss to President Trump in part to Comey’s disclosure.
[James Comey: ‘I don’t know’ if I cost Hillary Clinton the election]
ABC News reported that prior to sending the letter to Congress, at least one top official at the Justice Department warned the FBI that disclosing such information so close to the election would go against the department’s policy.
Comey told ABC News in an interview in April when he was promoting his new book that he would not have sent the letter had Lynch instructed him not to.
Horowitz’s draft report also condemned former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and other FBI officials for their response to the discovery of the emails on Weiner’s laptop, ABC News reported.
The draft report reportedly knocked Comey for not consulting with Lynch and other top Justice Department officials before he announced in July 2016 the FBI would not recommend criminal charges against Clinton for her handling of classified information through her email server.
Comey said in his statement, which was broadcast on national TV, that he had “not coordinated or reviewed this statement in any way with the Department of Justice or any other part of the government.”
Regarding Lynch, Horowitz’s draft report criticized the former attorney general for her handling of a meeting with former President Bill Clinton that occurred on a tarmac at an airport in Arizona, which took place while the FBI’s investigation into Clinton’s email use was still going on.
Amid the backlash to the impromptu meeting, Lynch said she would “fully expect to accept” the recommendations the FBI made regarding the Clinton email probe.
Lynch issued a statement in April saying that she “trusted” the “non-partisan career prosecutors” overseeing the investigation involving Clinton “to assess the facts and make a recommendation — one that I ultimately accepted because I thought the evidence and law warranted it.”
