This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The former FBI director James Comey did not follow protocol in his handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, the justice department’s independent watchdog has said in a new report.

A highly anticipated review by the DoJ’s inspector general, which was released on Thursday, condemned Comey and a handful of individual FBI personnel.

But the report found no evidence to support Donald Trump’s claim that the agency was motivated by political animus as it investigates potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow. It concluded that Comey’s controversial actions around the investigation into Clinton’s emails, although “deviant” from procedure, were not politically biased.



The report also reveals Comey used a private email account to conduct official FBI business. “But my emails,” Clinton tweeted in response.

Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) But my emails. https://t.co/G7TIWDEG0p

The 500-page report largely focuses on the conduct of the nation’s top law enforcement agency, which is historically non-partisan, during the 2016 presidential election.

The report also includes previously unreported text messages between two FBI officials, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who privately criticized Trump and previously worked on the bureau’s Russia investigation.

Among the new text messages uncovered in the report is one dated 8 August 2016, three months before the election, in which Page asked: “[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Strzok replied: “No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it.”

Mueller reassigned Strzok last summer after the anti-Trump messages came to light. Page is no longer with the FBI.

“The conduct by these employees cast a cloud over the entire FBI investigation,” the inspector general, Michael Horowitz, said in the report.

He nonetheless concluded: “We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that improper considerations, including political bias, directly affected the specific investigative actions we reviewed.”

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Horowitz had a similar assessment for Comey, whose particular actions leading up to the election have been the subject of intense debate due in large part to his reopening of the federal investigation into Clinton’s emails just 11 days before Americans went to the polls.

“While we did not find that these decisions were the result of political bias on Comey’s part,” Horowitz wrote, “we nevertheless concluded that by departing so clearly and dramatically from FBI and department norms, the decisions negatively impacted the perception of the FBI and the department as fair administrators of justice.”

The report calls Comey “insubordinate” and says his actions were “extraordinary” for failing to communicate with his superiors at the DoJ at pivotal moments in the Clinton investigation. It also asserts that a series of errors in senior leadership tarnished the agency’s reputation as a neutral arbiter of justice.

“The damage caused by these employees’ actions extends far beyond the scope of the midyear (Clinton) investigation and goes to the heart of the FBI’s reputation for neutral factfinding and political independence,” the report reads.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Christopher Wray, the FBI director: ‘Nothing in this report impugns the integrity of our workforce.’ Photograph: Michael Reynolds/EPA

In an opinion piece in the New York Times, Comey defended his actions, arguing that “nothing in the inspector general’s report makes me think we did the wrong thing”.

He he added on Twitter: “People of good faith can see an unprecedented situation differently. I pray no director faces it again. Thanks to IG’s people for hard work.”

Clinton offered a wry reply to the report on Twitter. “But my emails,” she said, responding to a reporter who highlighted findings from the report that Comey had used a personal Gmail account to conduct official business.

Her campaign has argued that the focus on her use of a private email server was overblown, while Clinton has blamed Comey’s intervention in the waning days of the election cycle for her surprise loss to Trump.



Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) But my emails. https://t.co/G7TIWDEG0p

The FBI director, Christopher Wray, defended his agency in response to the scathing report that sharply criticized the actions of his predecessor.

“Nothing in this report impugns the integrity of our workforce as a whole or the FBI as an institution,” Wray told reporters on Thursday afternoon.

In response to the findings, Wray said certain agents had already been referred to the FBI’s disciplinary arm and pledged that the agency “won’t hesitate to hold people accountable”.

Comey was controversially fired by Trump in May 2017 – a move the president conceded was due in part to “this Russia thing”, contradicting the assertions of his own White House that Comey’s role in overseeing the Russia investigation was not a factor in his firing.



The president has repeatedly dismissed the special counsel’s investigation into whether his campaign coordinated with the Russians as a “witch-hunt”. On Thursday, Trump tweeted: “Now that I am back from Singapore, where we had a great result with respect to North Korea, the thought process must sadly go back to the Witch Hunt, always remembering that there was No Collusion and No Obstruction of the fabricated No Crime.”

Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, said the report “reaffirms the president’s suspicion about Comey’s conduct and about the political bias of some members of the FBI”.

Mueller’s inquiry has produced indictments against at least 20 people and three companies, including several former members of Trump’s campaign. At least three former Trump officials – George Papadopoulos, who was a foreign policy adviser; Michael Flynn; former national security adviser; and Rick Gates, an ex campaign aide – have pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about their contacts with Russians.

In a statement, the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, said the report report “reveals a number of significant errors by the senior leadership of the Department of Justice and the FBI during the previous administration”.

Sessions, who has so far rebuffed Republican calls for a second special counsel to examine the FBI’s Russia investigation, also suggested additional action could be forthcoming pending recommendations from a separate and ongoing review of the bureau’s conduct that is being led by US attorney John Huber.

“The department is not above criticism,” Sessions said. “This has been a prolonged and painful process for the department and the FBI. But this is not the end of the process.”