The Truth About the Horowitz Report

by Dave Ball: The long-anticipated Inspector General Report, aka the Horowitz Report, was finally released on December 9th. After two years of investigation, the report was probably a disappointment to some, a thrill to others, and misunderstood by most.

The liberal media immediately latched on to the report and claimed that it validated their breathless reporting of evil doings by the Trump administration when it said the FBI had adequate cause to open its investigations and that there was no documented political bias evident. Conservative media noted that the report proved the whole investigation was a farce from beginning to end. The reality is that this is an inconclusive report because of the limitations of the inspector general.

The Department of Justice inspector general works for the department he is investigating. His job is to keep order in the house. His task was to see if FBI guidelines were followed. In many cases these guidelines were not even written guidelines. He was tasked with determining if there was sufficient basis for opening an investigation. The threshold for opening an investigation is so low there is not much to find.

The question of political bias, from the IG investigation perspective, is almost a non-issue since it pertains almost exclusively to the decision of whether to open the case or not. Since the threshold is so low, it’s hard to imagine anything keeping them from opening a case if they wished to -– and they did wish to. Anything that followed shared the stain of bias.

The key to the IG report was not whether it explicitly said there was or wasn’t reason to open the four investigations. The really important part was the 17 significant errors or omissions in the Carter Page FISA applications and the many additional errors contained in the Woods Procedures (a procedure requiring the vetting of every fact submitted to a FISA court for permission to spy on an American.) The IG report found that many significant facts were withheld from the court and others were altered. It is a damning assessment of the veracity of the FBI and the fundamental basis of the entire investigation. It is also a felony crime.

Of the 17 major errors found in the Page FISA application information, all the errors favored Hillary Clinton and the Clinton campaign. This is incalculably beyond coincidence. It is facial political bias.

The many errors and omissions were never satisfactorily explained to the Office of Investigations. The report stated that it appeared agents were substituting their own judgements in place of the OI judgements. If this isn’t investigatory bias, what is? The FBI knew that the Steele Dossier contained many errors and much questionable data but never asked Christopher Steele who funded the dossier, even though there was fairly open speculation that it was the Clinton campaign. Why not, other than political bias?

So, when Horowitz answers the question about possible bias by saying there was no “documentable” political bias, what did anyone expect he would find? Clinton’s army were all high-ranking FBI bureaucrats who know how not to leave footprints. There is no question as to their personal bias against President Trump, but Horowitz was not asked to look at personal bias and, like a good bureaucrat himself, only did as instructed. Of course there was personal bias. That is documented in every action and utterance. While the press is trying to portray the IG report as some sort of absolution for the FBI, quite the opposite is true. It portrays a frightening picture of bias, bad judgement, and violations of essential process that should worry every American. The FBI, without doubt, corrupted the FISA Court process and obtained warrants to spy on an American it had no right to obtain. It obtained those warrants by using false information supplied by a duplicitous agent of the DNC and the Clinton campaign. The crowning evidence is that the FBI was, in their own testimony, “so concerned that Russia would interfere with the 2016 election that they ramped up their investigation.” They were so concerned that they didn’t bother to tell one of the two candidates. No bias here. Move along. Nothing to see.

The initial FISA warrant was obtained with tainted information and the renewals were obtained with outright doctored and falsified evidence.

As the Horowitz investigation proceeded, a number of lawyers working on the FISA applications were fired, resigned, or were referred for criminal prosecution. As the Russian hoax imploded, the stench of rot grew stronger. The report cites “countless examples of corruption and deceit committed by employees throughout the FBI and DoJ confirming the investigation against Trump was aggressive, politically tainted and bore no fruit.”

So here we have it, the first of two investigations of the FBI and the Clinton campaign attack on Trump. This is supposedly the “toothless” report. Yet to come is the John Durham Report, which is now a wide-ranging criminal investigation that is able to go places the Horowitz investigation was not. Durham and Barr have clearly indicated that they intend to hold people accountable where Horowitz did not. This may well imply a lengthy list of indictments reaching well up the food chain in the FBI and elsewhere. Watch how political bias is converted into felony actions.
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Dave Ball writes for the American Thinker.

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