Today. Last week the president was tweeting about the report saying what is taking so long with the Inspector Generals report, now you would think he would jump at the chance to read all 568 pages about it and tweet about it or at least the 14 page executive summary but because we know the president is not a reader, anything longer than a tweet is too much for this president. But heres the thing. It turns out that these 568 pages can actually be summarized in a tweet. And they have been summarized in a tweet masterfully by veteran washington reporter john harwood of cnbc who delivered the entire report in a digestible morsel perfect for the president of the United States. To sum up Justice DepartmentInspector General concluded that bias did not affect clinton email investigation. That fbi had proper reasons for declining to prosecute her. And that the only improper actions influencing the 2016 election were actions that damaged clinton, not trump. So if you read one tweet about the Inspector Generals report, let it be john hardwoods tweet. The president wont hear that perspective from his favorite media outlets. Theyll be focussing on the findings that james comey was wrong to publically reveal the findings and that james comey should have defefred to the attorney generals. The only people unhappy about the handling of the investigation during the campaign were republicans. He talked about extremely careless she was extremely careless, thats a tremendous word. Look at what the fbi director said about her, her misconduct is a disgrace and an embarrassment to our country. Trump cheerleaders will, of course, continue to cling to the idea that the fbi is a politically biassed organization of 35,000 people of Hillary Clinton supporters trying to derail the campaign. The Inspector General disagrees. His report recognizes that almost like every work place in america, the fbi is filled with republicans and democrats and independents and nonvoters all of whom are free to have their political opinions and their favorite candidates and all of whom, just like our injury juries and grand juries take an oath to set aside bias they might have to evaluate evidence. The Inspector Generals report highlights a couple texts from two of the 35,000 people working in the fbi, who were clearly hoping, as most of america was at the time, that donald trump would never become president. On august 8, 2016, lisa page texted peter strzok, who she was romantically involved with, trumps not ever going to become president , right . No, no, hes not. Well stop it. Thats the smoking gun as far as the president s cheerleaders are concerned proving how wildly out of control and biassed the fbi is. The fbi was trying to stop the trump election. The president s cheerleaders will never tell you what the Inspector Generals reports says about that on page 404. When asked about this text message, strzok stated that he did not specifically recall sending it, but that he believed that it was intended to reassure page that trump would not be elected, not to suggest that he would do something to impact the investigation. Strzok told the oig that he did not take any steps to try to affect the outcome of the president ial election in either the mid year clinton investigation or the russia investigation. Strzok stated that had he or the fbi, in general, actually wanted to prevent trump from being elected, they would not have maintained the confidently of the investigation into alleged collusion between russia and members of the Trump Campaign in the months before the election. Page similarly stated that although she could not speak to what strzok meant by that text message, the fbi desituation to keep the russia investigation confidential before the election shows they did not take steps to impact the outcome of the election. The Inspector General found that to be true. The Inspector General found those politically biassed texts had absolutely no affect on the professional behavior of lisa page or peter strzok. We further found evidence that in some instance strzok and page advocated for more aggressive investigate measures in the mid year investigation such as the use of grand jury subpoenas and search warrants to obtain evidence. The Inspector General points out a grand jury was not empanelled in the clinton investigation because they feared releasing classified information to grand jurors. That decision was, quote, supported by department and fbi policy and practice. The Inspector General said they asked clinton what appeared to be appropriate questions and made use of documents to challenge clintons testimony and assess her credibility during her interview. The Inspector General found that the decision not to prosecution Hillary Clinton, quote, was consistent with the departments historical approach in prior cases under different leadership, including the 2008 decision not to prosecute former general gonzalez for mishandling documents. The only problem was james comeys decision to discuss the investigation. First when he announced there would be no prosecution and in october when he announced the investigation had been reopened because of discoveries on Anthony Weiners laptop. He was the curse of the Clinton Campaign, Anthony Weiner was caught engaging in communication with a minor, a crime for which he is now in prison. Prior to the day he was caught engaging in electronic sexual communication with a minor, Anthony Weiner was not considered a problem for the campaign, even though five years earlier nancy pelosi forced him to resign because of sending pictures well, we know. Pictures that were a result of a sickness he could not control he said. His scandals over the years after he left the house of representatives, was twice as big of a story because he was married to huma abedin. Hillary clintons staff member. It brings us to the pe cue lar thing that james comey said. This came in the section of the Inspector Generals report where he is trying to and failing to explain why it took the fbi a full month to begin the investigation of Anthony Weiners laptop. The emails were discovered on september 28th and supervisors were alerted, who alerted washington that there was material on the laptop, about 300,000 or more emails that could be related to the Hillary Clinton email investigation, which was an already closed investigation but perhaps needed to be reopened because of the Anthony Weiner laptop, the Inspector General described some confusion between new york and the bureau. It was very, very clear that the one month delay hurt the Clinton Campaign very badly because if the investigation was announced earlier it would have ended a month earlier, october 6th instead of november 6th, two days before the election. And the Clinton Campaign would have had time to recover from what would have been a weeklong set back in early october because of the Anthony Weiner laptop investigation which turned up nothing incriminating in the Hillary Clinton investigation. So that one month could be what turned the election for donald trump. When james comey was questioned by the Inspector General about that delay, it became clear that he was not involved in most of the communication about the Anthony Weiner laptop between washington and new york over those weeks and he explained his detachment from the beginnings of the investigation of Anthony Weiners laptop in this very strange way. He said, i dont know that i knew that weaner was married to huma abedin at the time. Wow then he was the only person involved in this fbi investigation who did not know that. Now the fbi director is an enormous job. And its become much, much more enormous in the 21st century now that it includes worldwide antiterrorism investigations 24 hours a day. Its possible to know what an fbi director is juggling on any given day when he might also have to think about Anthony Weiners lop top and remember who hes married to and who his wife works for. What the Inspector Generals report shows is that the fbi did a job that anyone can be expected to do. In a unique set of circumstances that no other fbi director has ever faced. The Inspector General found that the only serious mistakes in that investigation were made by the fbi director who believed he was fighting a 500year flood and that nothing nothing the fbi did was motivated by political bias. Leading off our discussion now, matt miller, harry litman, and also with us jennifer rubin. Matt miller, you have studied more Inspector General reports in the Justice Department than any of us. Your reaction to the 568 pages. I think you nailed the most important part of it. What i think it shows is that the president has been telling a lie to the American People for months now, for over a year about what happened in this investigation. We found out today to the extent the fbi did anything wrong, it helped donald trump, not hurt him. I think the hardest thing for me to be honest in reading this report, a lot of these people i know, i worked with a number of them, its painful to see what happened at the Justice Department, the fbi director takes a lot of the blame but Loretta Lynch takes a lot of blame from not preventing him from holding that press conference in july or sending that letter in october. Its a painful moment for the fbi. One of the sad things we know, the president has behaved irresponsibly in the attacks hes launched on the Justice Department. Almost all of them undeserved, unjustified, a great in number complete fabrications. But the Justice Department bears some responsibility for the way it handled the clinton investigation and the conduct it raised of the people. Not their motives with, but their conduct. And they created this open the president has exploited. Donald trump has exploited this investigation from the start. He loved it when james comey went public and offered his criticisms of Hillary Clinton even though he was saying there was no case for prosecution there. Donald trump loved every word of the criticism. Of course. Any practical level the criticism doesnt hold because it only served to help trump and hurt clinton. But in a vague bomb throwing, trump jann way, its going to give him ammunition to essentially say as he has in his New York School kid way that hes a sleaze bag and in general to make an overall battle between him and comey. Theres an irony here, however. I mean, supposedly the department of justice, federal Law Enforcement is all this bunch of swamp dwellers and dishonest. Yet today what happened . Both sides are embracing the professional findings of an Inspector General who is part and parcel of the overall culture of impartiality and seriousness for the truth that the Department Works under. No one is going to try to second guess what he says, thats the way it work, the political structure is strong. And to embrace the findings here really is to embrace the professionalism of the department of justice. Harry makes a great point, jennifer. Having studied this report myself. I didnt find a line in it where i was in any sense disagreeing with the Inspector General. It all flows in a perfectly logical and professional way. It does. It is comprehensive, i think. I think its somewhat balanced if we can use that word, balanced is not always appropriate. The one complaint that i had was the issue of the emails between fbi officials, fbi agents. They do have First Amendment rights. They shouldnt have been using the email that belonged to the department but james comey also used email for personal use but they are allowed to have political views, they are allowed to discuss things with their friends. Looking at those emails they could have been send by you, me, or matt or many other people in the United States. I dont see the reason for the fervor behind the Inspector Generals condemnation of those employees. That would be my one caveat. I would like to say with respect to comey, what comey did was not lie, was not an issue of making stuff up. Comey was excessively cancandid. He wanted to tell everyone what he found. If you want to think about this logically, which trump and his minions do not, it doesnt impair his credibility in the russia investigation. As a practical matter it does not. Its not like Robert Mueller is going to rely on james comey only or on one fbi agent. Hes got thousands of documents. Hes got hundreds of witnesses. Hes got probably Michael Cohen, hes got cooperating witnesses. He is putting together a mammoth case and the notion any one person, even james comey, could dislodge or discredit that investigation, i just think is wrong. I dont think thats how bob mueller is making his case. Harry, in my close reading of the report, i found to jennifers point about the fbi agents First Amendment rights. The Inspector General grants them those rights he doesnt grant them using fbi communication equipment and thats what they were using for this. My reading between the lines of this is the Inspector General would be okay with it if they were communicating this way to each other on personal cell phones. Yeah i think thats right. As jennifer says, this was sort of snide, theres that one very troubling email that strzok tries to explain away. But, you know, i think its just not unusual and if there were to be a plumbing of the depths of the different emails that went between fbi agents during an investigation youd find a lot worse. The important thing is theres no allegation that it affected the investigation at all and indeed after mueller quickly moved to fire them, everything was revisited to make sure there was no possible flaw or infirmity. At the end of the day all horowitz says is its an appearance problem. Yes, its an appearance problem, but nothing that could give rise to any valid charge that somehow the probe in its genesis was infected. Matt, youve put some emphasis on an email thats in this report where james comey is telling others involved in the issue that hes against any public reference, any more public reference to a possible investigation of russian interference possibly with the Trump Campaign because its now within the fourweek window of the election and this is being written by someone who is going to crack that window wide open just about a little over a week before the election on the Hillary Clinton matter. It was a remarkable email he sent to James Clapper and john brennan, the director of the cia. Where he said were too close to the election to do this. The thing they wanted to do is not to say that Donald Trumps campaign was being investigated. It was just to say that russians the russian government was trying to interfere with the election. It wasnt comparable to what he later did to Hillary Clinton when he sent that letter up to the hill. Its hard to take that email just on its own face, even forgetting about Hillary Clinton and look at it and go why wouldnt you think this information was relevant to the American Public . It was. Youre not talking about one candidate, youre talking about what a foreign power does. But when you compare it to what he did to Hillary Clinton, sent this letter, you had officials in the Deputy AttorneyGenerals Office telling him we dont think you should do this, this is a mistake, a violation of doj policy and he did it 11 days from the election when they didnt know if they had anything. They didnt know if the emails were did you pli cats, they were new, if there was anything incriminating. And they took this step to Alert Congress and the American Public so close to an election against doj regs. Thats the sin top to bottom of comey here are arrogance. There are rules and regulations at the department and again and again he took it upon himself to make his judgment about what was best for the bureau, the American People, disregarded what lynch had to say. Thats the real indictment here. On that email from comey it wasnt up to him whether they go public with this.