According to Benjamin Wittes in lawfareblog on Aug. 29, 2019, “Inspector General Horowitz of the Justice Department has determined that it is misconduct for a law enforcement officer to publicly disclose an effort to shut down his investigation.”
Think about that for a minute. That an Obama-appointed Inspector General has got on board with Attorney General Barr is both appalling and chilling.
Wittes continued, “Michael Horowitz would probably not describe his findings that way. But that seems to me the inescapable message of the inspector general’s report, released today, on former Director James Comey’s handling of his memos on his interactions with President Trump.
“To be sure, you have to read through a lot of pages, facts and argument to get there. But get there you do if you read the document carefully. It’s an extraordinary message for an inspector general to send. And it warrants scrutiny.
“For all that Horowitz spent two years on this investigation, there aren’t a lot of new facts—at least not major ones—in this document. The reason is simple: Comey has never been anything but straightforward concerning why he wrote the seven memos in question, what he did with them, whom he shared them with and what his motives were in doing so. On all significant factual questions, the 62-page report merely fleshes out a story that has been known to the public for the better part of two years.”
Context Matters
Inspector General Horowitz, who reports up to Barr, wishes that Comey had followed the internal policy.
However, if Comey had followed the policy, no one outside the Trump Family, Complicit Accomplices and Henchmen’s Club would ever have known that or how much Trump interfered with an FBI investigation. Nor would anyone have ever found out about the depth of Russian involvement in the American election or in the degree to which the Trump campaign cooperated, conspired or attempted to conspire with Russian oligarchs and government figures. Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation never would have happened.
This is the part of the Horowitz report that has him so worked up, and it comes after about 50 pages of a dry recitation of simple facts:
“Comey violated FBI policy and the requirements of his FBI Employment Agreement when he chose this path. By disclosing the contents of Memo 4, through Richman, to The New York Times, Comey made public sensitive investigative information related to an ongoing FBI investigation, information he had properly declined to disclose while still FBI Director during his March 20, 2017 congressional testimony. Comey was not authorized to disclose the statements he attributed to President Trump in Memo 4, which Comey viewed as evidence of an alleged attempt to obstruct the Flynn investigation and which were relevant to the ongoing Flynn investigation. . . . Comey placed in the public domain evidence relevant to the investigation of Flynn, and what he clearly viewed as evidence of an attempt to obstruct justice by President Trump. Rather than continuing to safeguard such evidence, Comey unilaterally and without authorization disclosed it to all (emphasis added).”
Missing The Point
It is astounding that Horowitz has missed the point that the problem is Trump’s interference with an FBI investigation of Flynn, not that Comey shared the information about the interference with people in a position to do something about it: initiate a full conducted by an special counsel.
The whole reason that a special counsel was needed was that the FBI would not able to conduct a thorough investigation because the FBI is within the government. In a Trump administration, one cannot expect asking people within the Federal government to investigate others in the Federal government to yield the kind of information and results needed.
Even though the Mueller investigation was more independent from the government, specifically the DOJ, than an FBI investigation, it still did not yield all the necessary results. The DOJ policy preventing indictment of a sitting president severely constrained the Mueller investigation from doing all that it could. That is the greatest miscarriage of justice in this entire affair.