A bit of news broke late last night. It was relayed by Rep. John Ratcliffe of Texas, who says he spoke directly to IG Horowitz, the man leading the investigation into possible abuse of the FISA system by FBI officials.

Per Ratcliffe, the investigation is done and the report is currently being drafted. The Daily Caller has the details of his interview on Fox News where he shared what he was told.

“He related that his team’s investigative work is complete,” said Ratcliffe, a Republican member of the House Intelligence and House Judiciary Committees. “They are now in the process of drafting the report. I would expect that it will be a draft that will be completed in short order.”

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the report is going to be made public anytime soon. Even Congress likely won’t get it until August at the earliest.

Ratcliffe said that he does not expect that the report will be made public “any time real soon,” though he is hopeful it will be released before Congress breaks for its August recess. “He did relate to that as much as 20 percent of his report is probably going to include classified information, so that draft report will have to undergo a classification review at the FBI and at the Department of Justice,” he said. “So, while I am hopeful that we might see it before members of Congress recess for the August recess, I’m not too certain about that.”

Some in the media were asserting sources that had the report coming as soon as June. That obviously didn’t happen and with the FBI and DOJ needing to scrub the document before public release, there’s no reason to think we’ll get the report before the fall. Given past foot-dragging by the FBI and DOJ on these matters, I wouldn’t expect them to make it a priority either.

The longer this drags on, the more skeptical I am that any honest assessment will meet public scrutiny. If the report does make it to Congress in early August, we’ll likely start to see aspects of it discussed at that point. Without the actual documentation though, you can expect a similar slap fight like the one that occurred between Trey Gowdy and Adam Schiff over the original FISA application (eventually Schiff’s memo on the matter would be exposed as completely misleading and containing several outright falsehoods).

The public needs to see the report and they need to see it sooner rather than later. Hopefully, the IG and the FBI/DOJ realize the importance of that and how vital accountability is to restoring any semblance of trust in our institutions. For now, I won’t hold my breath.

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