Newly Declassified DOJ Watchdog Report Shows FBI Cut Corners in Clinton Email Investigation
I'm archiving "Clinton annex" here to make its text searchable. You can download the annex in PDF format via the link below:
Check my other posts for the previous parts. This is part 5.
B. (redacted) FBI Assessment of the (redacted) Reports
(redacted) Comey and McCabe were informed about the reports, but witnesses did not recall precisely when this took place. McCabe told the OIG that they discussed internally whether there were any investigative steps available that would allow them to validate the information in the (redacted) reports, such as a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant or a subpoena for Lynch's email records. Comey, McCabe, Anderson, and Jim Rybicki, Comey’s Chief of Staff, were involved in those discussions, as were others on the Midyear team, including Strzok. McCabe said that they considered asking T1 to collect additional information, but that there were legal concerns (redacted). McCabe told the OIG that they agreed that there were no obvious next steps and decided to consult with Associate Deputy Attorney General David Margolis, who was at the time the highest ranking career Department official. As discussed below, that meeting occurred on March 31, 2016.
(U) Credibility of the Information
(redacted) Anderson summarized the FBI's assessment and handling of the (redacted) reports in a letterhead memorandum (LHM), which was serialized to the Midyear case file. According to the LHM, the FBI did not view the information in the (redacted) reports as credible. Most importantly, the FBI assessed that the information in the reports was inconsistent with Director Comey's experience with Lynch and the experiences of other FBI executives in the course of the Midyear investigation. Asked about this, Comey told the OIG:
(redacted) I want to be clear on this, I had felt no effort to control me, no intervention by the Attorney General. On their face, I didn’t find these communications to be credible and that I read them as an effort by Ms. Wasserman Schultz to assure donors that this is not going to screw up the presidential campaign of Secretary Clinton. And so I didn’t find them credible on their face.
(redacted) Comey told the OIG that no one believed that the (redacted) reports were an attempt at purposeful misinformation by the Russians, but that they also did not credit the underlying information in them. He said that he focused on figuring out what to do with the (redacted) reports "as a counterintelligence matter."
(redacted) McCabe and Anderson similarly stated that the FBI did not feel pressured by Lynch. Both commented that Lynch was not engaged in the Midyear investigation. Anderson told the OIG that the FBI considered the possibility that, even in the absence of direct pressure, Lynch could have exerted indirect influence on the Midyear investigation, but that they agreed that was not a credible possibility.
(redacted) According to the LHM, other factors also weighed against finding that the information in the (redacted) reports was credible:
(redacted) The reports likely reflected multiple levels of hearsay given that they were based on purported communications between Wasserman Schultz and potential donors, not any underlying communications between Lynch and Clinton campaign staff (and, as described in more detail below, no such communications were found);
(redacted) Wasserman Schultz's communications may have contained exaggerations designed to reassure potential donors who were concerned by news reports about the FBI investigation;
(redacted) The (redacted) who drafted the reports may have injected opinion, editorialization, or exaggeration into the reports; and
(redacted) Translation errors may have contributed to the potential for unreliability.
(redacted) When asked about the impact of these other factors on the FBI's assessment of the credibility of the information, McCabe told the OIG:
(redacted) We absolutely believed the (redacted) collection is righteous and we have no reason to...question that these are in fact (redacted).... There are a few things that mitigate against our assessment of their credibility. One is of course we know how the Russians do their analysis. We know their analysis is kind of, their analytical standard is not exactly the same as ours. They typically contain editorialization and spin and hyperbole and all that kind of stuff.
(redacted) A second thing we know is that at this time the (redacted) is kind of under the gun to show some productivity from this massive phishing campaign that they have been engaged in since fall of 2014.
(redacted) Anderson similarly told the OIG that the (redacted) lacks analytical rigor in terms of objectivity and vetting of information, and routinely engages in "exaggeration for purposes of inflating the importance of their reporting." She said that these factors contributed to their conclusion that the assertions in the (redacted) reports were not credible.