Top Dems: IG report shows Comey’s actions helped Trump win election
Top Democrats say the long-awaited report released by the Justice Department’s internal watchdog on Thursday proves that the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email investigation helped Donald Trump win the 2016 presidential election.
“It was Trump who benefited from all these mistakes so it hardly reflects deep state or bias against him. … At the end of the day, the actions reviewed in this report helped Donald Trump win the election, not the other way around,” Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters on Thursday.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, added that then-FBI Director James Comey and other FBI officials “made serious errors of judgement” that “had the effect of helping the Trump campaign.”
{mosads}
The report, from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, hammered Comey for poor judgment during the 2016 election, but found no evidence that his key decisions were improperly influenced by political bias in his probe into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.
Schumer and Schiff, along with Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the top Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee and Senate Judiciary Committee; House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.); Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee and House Oversight Committee, held a press conference hours after the inspector general’s report was released.
“The actions of the then-FBI director more than one time actually benefited Mr. Trump’s campaign and his election chances,” Warner said.
Democrats repeatedly brought up Horowitz’s finding that “no evidence that the conclusions by department prosecutors were affected by bias or other improper considerations” — all while standing next to a sign that depicted the quote.
Schumer added that the inspector general report “made clear” that Comey mishandled the Clinton investigation.
“We Democrats said that then,” he added, referring to the 2016 probe.
Republicans, meanwhile, have seized on the revelation of an inflammatory text message exchange between Peter Strzok, a top investigator into the Clinton email probe and into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, and FBI attorney Lisa Page that was included in the inspector general report.
“[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Page texted Strzok in August 2016. “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it,” Strzok responded, according to the report.
Strzok and Page were removed from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election after the text messages were obtained by internal investigators in the summer of 2017.
Democrats, on Thursday, warned Republicans and Trump against using the report to try to undercut Mueller’s investigation.
Pelosi added that the report “provides no basis for the GOP to challenge the legitimacy of the Mueller investigation.”