Radio Recap – IG: Comey Not Vindicated by Report

James Comey said that the report from Inspector General Horowitz vindicated him. The IG’s response: I don’t think anyone who touched this is vindicated.

On today’s Jay Sekulow Live we discussed the Inspector General’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

I think it’s important to start from the outset: Who’s vindicated and who’s not vindicated. Fired FBI Director James Comey authored an op-ed in the Washington Post where he said that his team and he, himself, were basically completely vindicated that there was nothing wrong. Then as you just read there was a series of questions and answers with Senator Lindsey Graham and IG Michael Horowitz.

From today’s hearing:

LINDSEY GRAHAM -- Former FBI Director James Comey said this week that your report vindicates him. Is that a fair assessment of your report?

IG MICHAEL HOROWITZ -- You know I think the activities we found here don’t vindicate anybody who touched this.

That’s a pretty big indictment right there.

Now we of course learned that James Comey did not renew his security clearance so he could not answer questions from the Inspector General.  We found that out at the end of the broadcast yesterday when Attorney General Barr mentioned:

I do think we have to wait until the investigation - the full investigation is done, and that’s the fundamental distinction between what Durham is doing and what the IG is doing. Durham is not limited to the FBI, he can talk to other agencies. He can compel people to testify. One of the problems in the IG’s investigation, I think he would agree, is that Comey refused to sign back up for his security clearance, and therefore could not be questioned about classified matters. So someone like Durham can compel testimony, he can talk to a whole range of people, private parties, foreign governments and so forth. And I think that is the point at which a decision has to be made about motivations, and I think right now would be premature to make any judgment one way or the other.

Attorney General Barr also said during that interview:

I think our nation was turned on its head for three years. I think, based on a completely bogus narrative that was largely fanned and hyped by an irresponsible press. And I think that there were gross abuses of FISA. And inexplicable behavior that is intolerable in the FBI.

ACLJ Director of Government Affairs Thann Bennett made the following point:

I’ve read the [IG] report and it is scathing. Look, John Durham can compel testimony like the Attorney General said. That information might not be in the report but what we do have is piles of missteps, errors, and piles of evidence. The IG says the evidence that he has weren’t made by decision makers, well guess who the decision maker in those cases was? It was James Comey and he has already been referred by this Inspector General to John Durham. If I were James Comey, I wouldn’t be saying another word.

It is not a pretty picture of what they did. The irregularities were extensive.

You can listen to the entire show here.