Republicans Demand Names of Anti-Trump FBI Employees From IG Report

Eight House Republicans are demanding that the DOJ Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, provide Congress with more information about the anti-Trump FBI employees quoted in his bombshell report. Reps. Dave Brat, Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar, and more sent a letter to Horowitz this week asking him to give them the names of the quoted FBI employees, expressing their gratitude for the report while insisting that further information was needed “in the interest of justice and transparency.”

“As representatives of the American people, Congress deserves to know exactly who contributed to the abuse of power at the Department of Justice and FBI,” the congressmen said in the letter. “These individuals need to be held accountable and only transparency will ensure that action.”

The report – said to be a “dud” by media analysts who didn’t bother reading its contents – has landed like an explosion in the middle of Washington. Republicans and Democrats are fighting bitterly on Capitol Hill over the conclusions reached by Horowitz, many of which are not supported by his own research. Horowitz determined that there was no “bias” that affected the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email scandal…but his 500-page report is filled with examples that contradict this finding. That discrepancy has him in the hot seat this week as he fields questions from members of the Judiciary and the Oversight and Government Reform Committees.

“If someone is prejudging the outcome of an investigation before it ends, and someone is prejudging the outcome of an investigation before it even begins, what is more textbook bias?” asked Sen Trey Gowdy on Tuesday.

Horowitz admitted that the messages sent by agent Peter Strzok and his lover, Lisa Page, were troubling and “antithetical to the core values of the department,” but he said he found no reason to believe that the investigation was affected by the FBI employees’ biases.

It’s really too bad (though completely unsurprising) that this report has just turned into another partisan Rorschach test in Washington. Republicans think it’s evidence that the FBI – if not engaged in an outright conspiracy to help Hillary Clinton escape justice – was completely biased towards a conclusion of innocence. Democrats think it only bolsters their opinion that James Comey cost their girl the election in 2016. And so it will likely just fade into the noise of the background and the country will forget the central problem: That the Obama administration’s FBI/DOJ was a fully political institution using its powers to influence an election.

And more importantly, that these powers are STILL being used to undermine the authority of the sitting President.