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Jan. 12, 2017, "Justice department to review FBI's conduct in Clinton email inquiry," Guardian UK, Oliver Laughland
"The justice department’s Office of the Inspector General announced on
Thursday that it would conduct a review of the handling of the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email server during her time as secretary of state.
The independent auditor said the sprawling review would include an
examination of whether the FBI director, James Comey, violated policy or
procedure when he sent Congress notification about new evidence his
department had discovered, 11 days before the presidential election....
Three days before the election, Comey publicly conceded
that none of the new material was pertinent to the investigation, which
concluded Clinton was not criminally responsible for the use of the
personal server but had been “extremely careless” in her handling of sensitive information.
The justice department review, a significant publicity blow to the FBI,
will examine this statement as well as a public announcement made by
Comey in July during which the findings of the investigation were made
public....
(Inspector General) Horowitz, an Obama appointee, said the review would also examine
whether justice department officials and FBI employees had “improperly
disclosed non-public information” during the investigation.
The review had been opened “in response to requests from numerous
chairmen and ranking members of congressional oversight committees,
various organizations, and members of the public”.
Jerry Nadler, a senior Democratic member of the House judiciary
committee and one of the most prominent voices calling for an
independent investigation of Comey’s conduct, welcomed the announcement.
“You can’t have the FBI or a prosecuting agency interfering with the
election and he [Comey] most certainly did. He should have been fired
for that on the spot,” Nadler told the Guardian in an interview.
“What’s important is that we firm up how government agencies, police
agencies behave before an election so that we can make sure that this
type of thing doesn’t happen again, so we don’t have future elections
whose legitimacy is called into question.”
Clinton’s former press spokesman Brian Fallon told MSNBC the review
was “entirely appropriate and very necessary but also not surprising
because the deviations from the FBI and the justice department were so
glaring and egregious”....
The sweeping nature of the review means it is also set to examine
whether the justice department’s assistant attorney general for
legislative affairs, Peter Kadzik, “should have been recused from
participating in certain matters” in the investigation of Clinton’s
emails.
Hacked emails posted by WikiLeaks showed Kadzik had contacted
Clinton’s campaign chair, John Podesta, to alert him to a forthcoming
congressional hearing that would likely involve questions about the
candidate.
Although the inspector general has the ability to recommend a
criminal investigation into Comey’s conduct, such a conclusion would be
highly unlikely, with the probe examining whether the director breached departmental policy on discussing investigations publicly."...
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