Outrage over bias at the FBI

OPINION:

The much-anticipated report of the Justice Department inspector general (IG) has satisfied neither Republicans nor Democrats. If you expected that the IG report would settle the endless debate about double standards (favoring either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump), that it would identify malefactors and punish the guilty, then you were sorely disappointed. Instead, Inspector General Michael Horowitz investigated heavily, labored mightily and produced a wrist-breaking tome that history will find wanting.

Americans had hoped for a thorough investigation as well as an objective analysis of what went wrong and who was responsible. As an Army officer, I endured annual IG inspections. If the evaluation went well, you could expect to keep your job; but if not, scathing IG comments sometimes found their way into individual efficiency reports. We expected the IG to be fair but fearless, a critical annual benchmark for an Army slowly recovering from Vietnam. If you couldn’t pass the IG inspection, then how could you expect to fight a war and win?

Instead of unflinching judgments, the Justice Department IG limited himself to soothing, anodyne platitudes with which no one could possibly disagree. For example, in that infamous airport tarmac meeting between Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch and former President Clinton, they only discussed their grandchildren; apparently left unmentioned was the delicate “matter” of Hillary Clinton that FBI Director James B. Comey was investigating. Nothing to see here, folks, certainly nothing rising to the level of “conflict of interest.” But the IG at least conceded that Attorney General Lynch had displayed “poor judgment.”

Speaking of Mr. Comey, exhaustive investigations that lead nowhere must be in the DNA of the Justice Department. Like Mr. Horowitz, Mr. Comey conducted a yearlong investigation of Mrs. Clinton before delivering his appalling July 2016 whitewash: “Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.” The IG effectively agreed, finding no evidence of “political bias” in Mr. Comey’s dubious conclusion, even though his press conference clearing Mrs. Clinton may have been “insubordinate.” Among the unanswered questions: Now that Hillary has been twice exonerated, how can our espionage laws be impartially enforced? In particular, after foreign intelligence is now known to have exploited classified information on her email server, how do you prosecute the next Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning?

Rep. Trey Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor, stated that he was “alarmed, angered and deeply disappointed” by the IG report, particularly its kid-glove treatment of an investigation that was profoundly “mishandled.” While the examination of Mrs. Clinton had largely been consensual, compulsory rigor was applied to Donald Trump. Even worse was “the alarming and destructive level of animus displayed by top officials at the FBI. Peter Strzok’s manifest bias is so pernicious and malignant as to both taint the process, the result, and the ability to have confidence in either,” said Mr. Gowdy. Well, other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

Only in the absurd worlds of Washington, D.C., and “Alice in Wonderland” can you have a situation like that which entangled FBI Assistant Director Andrew McCabe in February 2016. While he supervised the bureau’s investigations of Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation, Mr. McCabe’s wife was running for a seat in the Virginia Senate. Elections in the Old Dominion are expensive, and she received more than $600,000 in contributions from a PAC controlled by Virginia Gov. (and Clinton confidant) Terry McAuliffe.

Although Mr. McCabe sought ethics advice from his superiors, it was not until an October 2016 article appeared in The Wall Street Journal that those contributions became public. Only after that, and at the urging of Mr. Comey, did Mr. McCabe feel compelled to recuse himself. The IG’s verdict: “We believe McCabe did what he was supposed to do by notifying those responsible in the FBI for ethics issues and seeking their guidance.” Unlike Caesar’s wife, however, neither Mr. McCabe nor Mr. Horowitz felt much obligation for the assistant FBI director to stand above reproach.

The IG report also fails to raise any penetrating questions about why FBI leadership failed so miserably. While conceding that top FBI officials uniformly believed that Hillary Clinton would become the next president, why did these so-called investigators allow groupthink to overcome their professional judgment? Not only was Donald Trump anathema: According to emails exchanged between Mr. Strzok and colleague Lisa Page, he had to be stopped. Those candid conversations reveal a deeply troubling mindset in an agency charged with guarding American civil liberties.

Bottom line: In Texas, dedicated FBI field agents were critical during the recent investigations of the Sutherland Springs shootings and the Austin bombings. Those very special agents deserve better leaders than James Comey and his Washington cohorts.

• Ken Allard, a retired Army colonel, is a military analyst and author on national-security issues.