Probe of FBI leaks, Comey memos persists

Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz (left) and FBI Director Christopher Wray are sworn in Monday on Capitol Hill at a hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee to examine Horowitz’s report of the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.
Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz (left) and FBI Director Christopher Wray are sworn in Monday on Capitol Hill at a hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee to examine Horowitz’s report of the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.

WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department inspector general said Monday that his office is still probing possible misconduct in the FBI's safeguarding of its own secrets -- from how former Director James Comey handled his private memos to whether others under him may have given sensitive details to reporters.

Michael Horowitz revealed the continued investigative work to lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which on Monday conducted the first hearing to examine his 500-page report assessing how the FBI handled the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.

The report blasted senior FBI officials for having shown a "willingness to take official action" to hurt Donald Trump's chances of becoming president, though it determined political bias did not ultimately affect the decision not to charge Clinton with a crime.

FBI Director Christopher Wray, who also appeared at the hearing, said his agency is determined to not repeat any of the mistakes identified in the report.

Monday's hearing offered lawmakers on each side of the aisle an opportunity to press their long-held talking points about the Clinton email case and the similarly charged investigation into whether Trump's campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the 2016 election.

Horowitz conceded bias might have affected one FBI agent's decision to prioritize the Russia case over the Clinton email probe and called out as troubling a text exchange in which the agent told an FBI lawyer "we'll stop" Trump from becoming president.

"We found the implication that senior FBI employees would be willing to take official action to impact a presidential candidate's electoral prospects to be deeply troubling and antithetical to the core values of the FBI and the Justice Department," Horowitz said.

But Horowitz rebutted Trump's claim that the report exonerated him with respect to possible coordination with Russia, saying flatly, "We did not look into collusion questions."

One of Horowitz's most notable assertions was that his office, based on a referral from the FBI, was reviewing the handling of Comey's memos detailing what the former FBI director viewed as troubling interactions with Trump. Horowitz said he planned to issue a report on the matter, as well as another one on leaks from the FBI.

Asked whether the office was still investigating improper leaks, including to Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani -- who claimed to know in advance about damaging revelations against Clinton -- Horowitz said, "As we note in the report, our investigative work's still ongoing."

In his book released earlier this year, Comey said he shared one memo -- about a February conversation with Trump in which he alleged the president asked him to let go an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn -- with a friend, Columbia University law professor Daniel Richman. Richman then relayed the memo's contents to The New York Times, which Comey has said was meant to spur the appointment of a special counsel.

Another person familiar with the case, however, said Comey eventually shared other memos with his lawyers, including Richman, though he held back some information that he considered classified.

The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic.

Shortly after Comey was fired, an FBI review determined some of the information in two of his memos was classified, said a person familiar with the matter, prompting the FBI to retrieve those documents from two people with whom Comey had shared them.

SENATORS WEIGH IN

Horowitz appeared at the hearing Monday with Wray, who sought to assure lawmakers he was working to impose changes at the bureau and avoid the mistakes of his predecessor.

Wray said he already had ordered the bureau's No. 3 official to assess how sensitive investigations are handled, ordered new "in-depth" training for senior managers and created a unit to specifically investigate leaks.

The FBI is also reinforcing through employee training the need to avoid the appearance of political bias, a key point of criticism in last week's report, and has referred employees singled out in the report to the agency's investigative arm for possible discipline.

"The OIG's report makes clear that we have significant work to do and as I said we're going to learn from the report and be better as a result," Wray said

Wray also noted, though, that the inspector general did not impugn the bureau "as a whole." That sentiment seemed to irk some lawmakers.

"There is a serious problem with the culture at FBI headquarters," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.

"Senator, I don't intend in any way to downplay the significance of the report," responded Wray, before again defending the organization.

"I see the FBI up close, every day," he said. "The conduct, the character the principle that I see in those people every day is extraordinary and would be an inspiration to the members of the committee."

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, asserted that the report showed Clinton "got the kid-glove treatment," and if it were not for the inspector general, FBI officials would "still be plotting about how to use their official position to stop" Trump. The report detailed how investigators on the Clinton case shied from using subpoenas or other legal tools to force witnesses to testify or turn over materials, though it did not conclude the tactics were unreasonable.

"The Justice Department faces a serious credibility problem because millions of Americans suspect that there is a double standard," Grassley said. "They see a story of kid-glove treatment for one side and bare-knuckle tactics for the other. They see politics in that story."

Though not agreeing with those characterizations, Wray said he accepted that the FBI had made mistakes and chided Comey's judgment, saying, "There are a number of things that I probably would have done differently." He also said he could not imagine a scenario in which he would have unilaterally announced his charging decision at a news conference, as Comey did.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the panel's top Democrat, countered that the inspector general "found no evidence of political bias" in the Clinton email case, particularly in the decision not to prosecute the former secretary of state.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will be the first of two committees to question Horowitz and Wray this week about the report's findings. After its release Thursday, Republicans seized on the findings that key players in the FBI's probes of Clinton and Russian interference in the 2016 election expressed anti-Trump sentiments in text messages to each other, especially one in which then-top counterintelligence official Peter Strzok told then-FBI lawyer Lisa Page that "we'll stop" Trump from becoming president.

Wray, notably, said he did not believe the Russia probe, which is now being led by special counsel Robert Mueller, was a "witch hunt" -- the term the president often uses to describe it. The FBI director also seemed to suggest the president's criticisms of the bureau would not affect its work.

"There's a reason I always say that we are going to do our work independently and objectively, no matter who likes it," he said.

The inspector general's report called Comey's actions in the last months of the Clinton email case "extraordinary" and "insubordinate."

While Horowitz confirmed he is reviewing Comey's memos, Republican lawmakers pressed for another possible line of inquiry: Comey's own use of private email for work purposes. The inspector found five instances in which Comey either drafted official messages on or forwarded emails to his personal account, though Horowitz said that from what he had seen, none of the emails contained classified information.

Grassley said his committee had invited Comey, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to testify at Monday's hearing, but each had declined. He took particular aim at Comey, who he said had claimed to be out of the country, though a weekend tweet indicated he was then in Iowa.

Information for this article was contributed by Matt Zapotosky, Karoun Demirjian and Devlin Barrett of The Washington Post; and by Eric Tucker and Mary Clare Jalonick of The Associated Press.

A Section on 06/19/2018

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