From the right: Horowitz Revealed Corruption

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the Trump-Russia investigation found that FBI officials “relied on hilariously implausible ‘evidence’ and falsified evidence of their own” to investigate the Trump campaign, yet somehow, observes National Review’s Kevin Williamson, it declared there to be “no evidence of political bias.” Huh? Would anyone be satisfied if, say, a police department “violated its own standards in its treatment of African-American suspects” — but then said it found no evidence of racial bias? In this case, the Obama-era FBI “sought to launch an investigation of the rival party’s presidential campaign in order to spy on it under powers reserved for national-security purposes,” even falsifying documents to get a federal court’s approval. Even if Horowitz found “no ‘bias,’ ” he uncovered a lot of corruption.

Ex-prosecutor: IG Report’s ‘Meaningless’ Finding

Horowitz’s finding that the Trump-campaign probe “was properly predicated” is “meaningless,” former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy explains at Fox News. When it comes to the level of “fact-based suspicion necessary” to open a counter-intelligence investigation, “the FBI sets the bar so low, it is illusory.” The agency’s “self-serving claim that, even if the grounds of suspicion were not strong, the nature of the allegation was so disturbing that it would have been irresponsible not to investigate” means “no allegation, no matter how thinly supported, is beyond the pale if it sounds sensational enough.” Truth is, Horowitz doesn’t address the crucial question — whether it “was appropriate for the FBI to open a case on sparse evidence in light of the possibility that the Bureau would interfere in, and potentially even swing, an American election.”

2020 watch: Biden’s Burisma Bugaboo

Fact: Burisma, an “allegedly corrupt Ukrainian gas company,” never would have offered Hunter Biden a “lucrative gig” as a board member if he weren’t Joe Biden’s son, asserts New York magazine’s Eric Levitz. And if Joe Biden ends up being the 2020 Democratic nomination, he’s going to be “confronted with questions about his son’s role at Burisma on a near-daily basis.” Yet the ex-veep “has not bothered to prepare credible, coherent answers to those questions” and hasn’t been able to respond to them without “flying into a barely concealed rage.” Just last week, Biden called a voter a “damn liar” for questioning him about Hunter’s job. Biden is “unable or unwilling” to answer “reasonable questions about his candidacy’s chief liability” — and that should be “completely disqualifying.”

From the left: Three Cheers for a One-Term Joe

On Wednesday, Politico reported that Democratic front-runner Joe Biden is “ ‘quietly’ signaling to aides he would serve only a single term” — and that, argues The Week’s Joel Mathis, is a good thing for progressives. For one thing, Biden’s ideal vice presidential pick is somebody who’s “young, progressive, and very likely a woman of color.” For another, progressives “may not like Biden all that much,” but they should “work vigorously for his victory” if they want to vote out President Trump. If progressives “play it right,” in fact, a single-term Biden presidency might offer them “a platform for long-term electoral and policy success” — and they should “start seizing” that opportunity now.

Culture beat: America’s Next Class Rift

The class divide that will “determine the future of politics,” predicts Julius Krein at American Affairs, isn’t between the top 1 percent and the other 99 percent but the top 0.1 percent and, at most, 10 percent. Yes, the “top 5 or 10 percent” has “done better than the middle and working classes in recent decades.” But that only “masks their dramatic underperformance relative to the top 1 percent (and especially the top 0.1 percent).” Fact is, elite careers aren’t “what they used to be,” Krein insists, citing declines in “Big Law,” finance and even at Silicon Valley. Behind all this is the “degeneracy” and “vacuousness” of the “billionaire class.” The key question is whether “the rest of the elite will consent to their continued proletrianization”?

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board