The Thursday, June 14 release of a long-awaited report from the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General (OIG) serves to remind the nation that power corrupts and that those in power will ultimately come to see themselves as being unaccountable. As the media, political operatives, and pundits begin to sink their teeth into this final account of what Michael Horowitz has uncovered, one could be forgiven for thinking that the final chapter of the Hillary Clinton email scandal has come to an end. Not so, however; the publication of the report is merely the beginning of the end.

In its entirety, the OIG report comes in at more than 550 pages and there is, no doubt, plenty that has yet to be discussed. Each side of the political divide has already set about spinning the revelations to suit their respective positions. It seems that the entire affair is already becoming a case of failing to see the forest for the trees. As breathless journalists and talk-show hosts begin to pile on, it would be worth taking three steps back and considering the overriding implications of what this entire investigation has told us about the state of the American political system.

Horowitz was never tasked with re-litigating Clinton’s use of a private email server while she served as Secretary of State, nor was he investigating her or her staff for mishandling classified information. His task was to audit the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s handling of those matters. What he has revealed to the American public is, in short, a very unfunny comedy of errors and, likely, some convoluted attempts to protect a favored presidential candidate from being fatally damaged as a result of her own wrongdoing.

Over the coming week, Liberty Nation will be analyzing the entire report in much greater detail, but the initial and, indeed, the essential takeaway is the unelected officials within the nation’s senior law-enforcement organization stumbled through the investigation of a very significant national security scandal. Along the way, those officials may well have allowed their own political biases to cloud their judgment.

They may have been motivated by those biases to depart from standard FBI procedure, inappropriately share sensitive information, and then attempt to cover up those transgressions – all through fear that a man they despised might become president of the United States.

The FBI is now in damage-control mode, as are certain former federal government officials. This report is not the autopsy of how the so-called ‘deep state’ became so corrupted; it is the first cut into the body. The autopsy itself begins now.