Justice official in familiar hot seat over emails
WASHINGTON — President Trump wasted no time before seizing on last week’s report by the Justice Department’s internal watchdog on misconduct allegations against the FBI’s former No. 2 official, Andrew McCabe. Trump tweeted it was proof that his archrival James Comey, the former FBI director, “totally controlled” McCabe.
But the report by Inspector General Michael Horowitz said no such thing. In fact, it depicted clashing accounts of a conversation they had that contributed to McCabe’s dismissal. Horowitz’s office concluded McCabe hadn’t been forthcoming about having authorized FBI officials to speak with a journalist about an investigation into the Clinton Foundation. The FBI’s internal disciplinary office recommended McCabe’s firing. Attorney General Jeff Sessions dismissed him last month.
McCabe denies misleading anyone. His lawyer, Michael Bromwich, a former inspector general himself, blamed Horowitz for severing the McCabe matter from the rest of the investigation. He says investigators rushed to complete their work before McCabe’s planned retirement.
It’s not unusual for Horowitz to see his actions caught up in Washington’s political storms, despite the apolitical reputation he has cultivated over six years on the job. Trump has disparagingly called Horowitz an “Obama guy” even as McCabe’s lawyers have decried the report and investigative process as unfair.
The controversies he has endured are likely nothing compared to what awaits him in coming weeks when he announces the findings of his review into the FBI’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation. The report will inflame the debate about whether FBI actions during the campaign affected the race’s outcome. And Trump’s friends and foes will inevitably scour for any nugget that can undermine his criticism of their side, and Horowitz himself.
Charles McCullough, a former intelligence community inspector general who referred the Clinton emails to the FBI, said he believes Horowitz’s report will be “absolutely thorough and completely accurate.”
Still, he said, Horowitz “will be in the same vortex that we were in, and you just have to manage that as best as you can because of the politics.”
Horowitz declined to comment, through a spokesman.
The Clinton report is unquestionably Horowitz’s most politically consequential case, but it’s not his first high-profile investigation.
He spent years as a federal prosecutor in the powerful Southern District of New York as chief of its public corruption unit, where he built cases against crooked police officers. He later served in top Justice Department roles under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.