As news broke Thursday morning of the Justice Department Inspector General releasing a report hammering ex-FBI Director James Comey for violating DOJ policies, MSNBC brought on analysts who were known allies of the controversial former Bureau chief. It was during one of those interviews that talking points for the left-wing cable channel’s coverage were established for the rest of the day.

Just minutes after the IG report came out in the 10:00 a.m. ET hour on Thursday, MSNBC anchor Hallie Jackson turned to former Obama Justice Department spokesperson Matthew Miller, who now serves as a justice and security analyst for the media outlet. Miller ranted: “I think that conclusion by the Inspector General that he did violate FBI rules, while probably technically true on its face, it just so misses the context of the time....it really feels to me like the IG has missed the mark.”

Jackson followed up by citing Miller’s earlier Twitter tirade against the DOJ watchdog: “You make the analogy on your Twitter....that this was like slapping somebody on the wrist for racing to save a burning village, right? Explain that. What do you mean by that?” Miller eagerly replied:

Yeah, well, what I said is it’s like giving – you know, faulting someone for speeding when they were coming to alert the village that a fire is coming. Look, the President of the United States was launching an assault on the Department of Justice....And yes, Jim Comey violated department rules at the time, but he did so as a whistleblower. And a whistleblower blowing on the whistle on some of the most disturbing conduct you can imagine by the President of the United States. So the idea that it’s important at all that he violated these department rules just seems to me very short-sighted and narrowly – and reflects a very narrowly scoped view of the world by the bureaucrats in the Inspector General’s office.

That sentiment, specifically the hyperbolic comparison of Comey to a firefighter speeding to the site of a blaze, was recycled throughout the rest of day by pundits and journalists alike on MSNBC.

Minutes after Miller called in, another Comey ally, former U.S. attorney Chuck Rosenburg, was on the phone with Jackson. He admitted to being “somewhat torn” over the IG report, but ultimately declared: “I think Matt Miller earlier today made a really important point, this was an extraordinary circumstance, and so we vest in the director of the FBI, as we vest in other senior leaders in government, the discretion and the ability to do extraordinary things in extraordinary times.”

Throughout the interview, Rosenburg repeatedly argued Comey was responding to an “emergency” and should be forgiven for not following proper procedure:

The President was interfering with an ongoing criminal investigation. Jim saw it as an extraordinary and deeply disturbing thing and took action to try and thwart it. That, at some level, Hallie, makes a lot of sense to me....What Jim was responding to was, in many ways, an emergency. And so, in an emergency, you need people to take emergency steps....desperate times require, on occasion, desperate measures.

In the 11:00 a.m. ET hour, talking to anchor Craig Melvin, Justice Department correspondent Julia Ainsley touted the comments from Miller and Rosenburg: “I think we’ve also heard, just on our air, from former employees, people who worked with James Comey, who said, you know, they’re conflicted....they say it was like charging someone with a speeding ticket on their way to put out a fire.”

As Ainsley appeared again in the 12:00 p.m. ET hour, anchor Andrea Mitchell proclaimed: “Julia, you spent the last few hours reading this whole report. Basically it clears Comey of wrongdoing.” Moments later, Ainsley downplayed the fired FBI Director’s leaks: “You and both know that confidential information or sensitive information is not classified and is passed in Washington everyday.” Mitchell wanted to remind viewers who the real villain was: “And also, he was facing a situation, just to explain, that the President of the United States was the antagonist here.”

In the 1:00 p.m. ET hour, MSNBC investigative reporter Tom Winter told anchor Ali Velshi that Comey “felt the need that the public should know about the information that was contained in these memos, memos that detailed his interactions with the President.” The correspondent added: “So I think Comey is probably looking for a little vindication here today.”

In the 2:00 p.m. ET hour, national security correspondent Ken Dilanian excused:

Comey may have committed a technical violation, but that’s why critics are likening this to giving a speeding ticket to a fireman on the way to a blaze. This Inspector General report really says almost nothing about the overall context in which Comey did this, which was he thought the President had obstructed justice, he believed the public needed to know this, and in fact, his actions caused a special counsel to be appointed.

Fill-in anchor Ayman Mohyeldin responded: “Yeah, one could make the argument that it kind of falls under the umbrella of whistleblowing on what he thought might have been wrongdoings by the President.”

The narrative continued into the evening hours on MSNBC, with Ainsley appearing on Thursday’s Hardball to repeat the claim that “it’s like punishing someone for speeding on their way to put out a fire.”

On Friday, Morning Joe welcomed Comey friend Benjamin Wittes on the program to blast the IG for supposedly telling DOJ employees to “be a stickler for the details of compliance with technical rules even if the house is burning down, even if you’re serving some awful larger objective in doing so.”

All it takes is a tweet or comment from a former Obama flack to write MSNBC’s “news” coverage.

Here is a transcript of the August 29 interviews with Miller and Rosenburg: