(THREAD) The Inspector General of the Department of Justice, Michael Horowitz, will release his much-anticipated report on the Clinton email probe today. Here are 10 things you need to remember/understand BEFORE the report is released this afternoon. I hope you'll read and share. 
1/ The subject of the report—the Clinton probe—is an FBI investigation whose management (or mismanagement) effectively gave Donald Trump the presidency. So even if Horowitz finds that the probe was woefully mismanaged, all he is doing is explaining how Trump was unfairly elected.
2/ The Horowitz report has nothing whatsoever to do with Bob Mueller's Russia investigation—nothing. No matter what the report says, it won't change even one *iota* anything that Mueller has found—and will continue to find—regarding ties between Trump and his campaign and Russia.
3/ *Every leak* from the Horowitz investigation so far has benefited Trump—which is a bad sign for the independence of the investigation. The names Lisa Page, Peter Strzok, and Andrew McCabe all became conservative rallying cries because information about them was wrongly leaked.
4/ Lisa Page and Peter Strzok—two names you'll hear often today via conservatives looking for scapegoats—are irrelevant because the Clinton probe they worked on benefited Trump and what little work they did on the Russia investigation was reviewed carefully after they were fired.
5/ Media is ignoring the most important type of evidence an IG report can reveal: intentional misconduct. We know rogue FBI agents in the NYC field office illegally leaked to help Donald Trump win, but the media won't cover it. If Horowitz ignores it, his report is without value.
6/ All those known to have made errors or created an appearance (if no proof) of impropriety have been fired—Page; Strzok; McCabe; Comey—with McCabe and Comey *exhaustively* discussing their actions. Meanwhile, Trump stooge Giuliani is still lying about the FBI leaks he received.
7/ One thing we already know about the Horowitz report: whether it's 100% "good" for Trump—by way of criticizing an agency now investigating him in a *totally different case*—75% good, or 10% good, Trump and his pals will mount an offensive today saying it somehow exonerates him.
8/ As we saw with Comey, there's a desire at DOJ and the FBI to withhold information if it makes Justice or the FBI look bad—and the very worst revelations Horowitz could've found (illegal FBI leaks trying to swing an election) are suspiciously the ones we're hearing least about.
9/ The report will be long, dense, and impossible to properly understand without the comprehensive knowledge of the '16 Clinton-probe and presidential-election timelines that few—even in media—have. Nearly all the analysis that follows the report will be too quick and inaccurate.
10/ While regrettable, the Horowitz Report leaks of the last six months provoked new discoveries: Page and Strzok did as much to wound Clinton as Trump; the work they did on Russia was vetted after their firing to ensure it had no effect; the FBI's NYC field office was pro-Trump.
CONCLUSION/ The report—which has nothing to do with Russia—will largely tell us things we already know about actions that helped Trump win. Trump will lie about the report. The report may undersell facts that would embarrass the FBI and confirm agents broke the law to help Trump.
PS/ Remember—almost everyone discussed in Horowitz's report is a Republican. Comey is a Republican; McCabe is a Republican; Rod Rosenstein is a Republican; Jeff Sessions is a Republican; and the New York field office of the FBI was so pro-Trump it was widely called "Trumplandia".
PS2/ Remember, too, that if the FBI is found to have made errors in no way the result of political bias, given that we know those errors—in total—helped Trump win the presidential election, it's not at all clear what in the *world* Trump or his allies will have to complain about.
PS3/ One early indication that Trump's most radical allies aren't satisfied with the report—almost certainly because they planned to use it to exonerate Trump in *an entirely different investigation*—is that they're demanding to see the early drafts of it. thehill.com/blogs/floor-ac…
