Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz told lawmakers on Monday that he is not confident that FBI agent Peter Strzok was unbiased during the bureau’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.
Horowitz defended his report on the Clinton email probe, which he released last week, during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. The IG report in part discussed controversial text messages between Strzok and his lover, FBI lawyer Lisa Page. Strzok said “we’ll stop” Donald Trump from becoming president in one message and called Trump supporters “retarded.”
The report has damaged the FBI’s public image and trustworthiness, and many observers, including Trump and members of Congress, have taken the report’s findings as an indication that the FBI made mistakes during the investigation.
Earlier in his remarks, Horowitz said his report did not find evidence that FBI decisions directly resulted from bias, but he highlighted the damage their mistakes caused.
Specifically, Horowitz said he could not have confidence that the FBI was free from bias when it prioritized investigating Russian involvement in the election over the contents of former Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner’s laptop.
“We found the FBI’s explanations for its failures to take immediate action after discovering the Weiner laptop in October 2016 to be unpersuasive, and we did not have confidence that the decision of deputy assistant director Strzok to prioritize the Russia investigation over following up on the Weiner laptop was free from bias in light of his text messages,” he said.- READ MORE
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