Just to make this clear--3. The report is vindication for Clinton

I had a good chuckle yesterday when Trump said the IG Report vindicated him!! He will never change his mind about this issue.





Jun. 15, 2018, at 9:04 AM
The 500-Page Inspector General’s Report In 900 Words

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-500-page-inspector-generals-report-in-900-words/

By Perry Bacon Jr.


Clinton Emails Inspector General
The FBI seal.

Jose Luis Magana / AP

The long-awaited report by the Justice Department’s inspector general examining the department’s conduct in the Hillary Clinton email investigation came out on Thursday, and, if nothing else, it’s exhaustive. At more than 500 pages, it carefully and meticulously unpacks how organizations and individuals acquitted themselves before and after the 2016 election. Of course, very quickly, much of the nuance was stripped out; interested parties — President Trump, his supporters, former FBI Director James Comey — all found in the report plenty of ammunition to load the gun they were already holding. Cherrypicking aside, however, the report did come to some conclusions.

So let’s look at the legal, policy and political implications of the report but also try to keep the nuance while losing some of the complexity (and adding some brevity). Here are four key takeaways from those 500+ pages in about 900 words. (Note: The report is overwhelmingly about the Justice Department’s and the FBI’s conduct in the Clinton email probe, not the investigations surrounding Trump or his campaign’s alleged connections to Russia. Inspector General Michael Horowitz is now looking into elements of the Trump investigation.)





1. Comey looks bad procedurally but not legally ....................



..............That and the damage this report does to Comey’s reputation will help Tru mp in continuing to cast the former FBI chief as a villain and the FBI as tarnished. But that’s a question of politics, not substance.




2. The FBI looks bad politically but not legally

Remember, this was largely a probe of how the FBI handled the Clinton investigation, not the Trump one. That said, the report highlights some problematic behavior by FBI officials that could hurt the bureau’s credibility in the Russia probe. .................



3. The report is vindication for Clinton

The report all but says that Comey was wrong to go public in the ways he did in the Clinton investigation in 2016. This is basically what Clinton has long argued. The report also basically confirms that she should not have been charged with any crime for email use. Of course, that doesn’t undo Comey’s actions, which may have cost Clinton the election. But still.




4. The report doesn’t mean much for the Russia probe — and that’s what really matters now

The inspector general’s report doesn’t undermine the Russia investigation — not on substance, at least........................................