Thread by @nycsouthpaw

According to the testimony of the Attorney General in the IG report, nine days before the election she and the FBI Director discussed how a “deep and visceral hatred of Secretary Clinton” by a cadre of senior NY FBI agents “has put us where we are today” w/r/t the Weiner laptop.

This conversation indicates that senior DOJ leadership concluded in real time that the deep political bias of senior FBI agents had led directly to official (and, per the IG, improper) investigative decisions, particularly the Comey letter.

Moreover, expert analysis suggests that those official decisions, which the AG tells us was prompted by what the FBI Director described as the “deep and visceral hatred” of one candidate by senior FBI employees, swung the election to the other candidate. fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-c…

Coverage of the IG report has not focused on this revelation of political bias, indeed “hatred,” by FBI agents affecting the election outcome. Instead it has been preoccupied with Strzok/Page, whose views the IG concluded had not affected the investigation much less the election.

These coverage choices mirror the asymmetry Democrats complained of in coverage of the email scandal itself. Much graver wrongdoing on the pro-Trump side is overlooked or given scant notice in favor of hypervigilant coverage of petty misconduct that media know Trump will amplify.

This is an important conversation between the Attorney General and the FBI Director. It occurred real time before the election and it concerned a grave, election-altering allegation of misconduct that the IG conspicuously did not resolve. Please give it the attention it deserves!

Strzok and Page are famous names now. We’ve read their texts. We know some of the most intimate details of of their lives. Who are the FBI agents whose “hatred” of one candidate prompted the Comey letter? What’s in their chat history? Will we ever get that part of the story?

Here’s a link to the IG report. The excerpt above is from the section on the October 31, 2016 conversation between Lynch and Comey, page 387. justice.gov/file/1071991/d…

The paragraph of Lynch’s testimony immediately preceding the excerpt above: Comey agreed with her view that he would not have sent his October letter but for fear of leaks. Then they launch into their discussion of the “visceral hatred” of Clinton in the FBI NY office.

One more note. This series of tweets from the day of the Comey letter describing an overheard conversation on an airplane remains the best reporting anywhere on the 2016 FBI. It’s still my Rosetta Stone for understanding what happened.

External Tweet loading...
If nothing shows, it may have been deleted
by @nycsouthpaw view original on Twitter

Thanks to @JeremyDDickey — he’s where the story is.