Clearly, there is no bias problem at the FBI

The conclusion of the DOJ Inspector General’s report is that bias did not impact the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails (though the IG did leave one question about this unresolved). Nevertheless, the report contains plenty of glaring examples of partisan bias among the agents and attorneys at the FBI over agency equipment.

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Allahpundit listed some of the examples involving Peter Strzok and Lisa Page earlier today, so let’s look at some more examples from other agents and one attorney who worked on the Clinton email investigation:

On September 9, 2016, Agent 1 and Agent 5 exchanged the following instant messages.

08:56:43, Agent 5: “i’m trying to think of a ‘would i rather’ instead of spending time with those people”
08:56:54, Agent 1: “stick your tongue in a fan??”
08:56:58, Agent 5: “i would rather have brunch with trump”
08:57:03, Agent 1: “ha”
08:57:15, Agent 1: “french toast with drumpf”
08:57:19, Agent 5: “i would rather have brunch with trump and a bunch of his supporters like the ones from ohio that are retarded”
08:57:23, Agent 5: “:)”

Here’s the commentary from the same two agents on election day:

14:21:10, Agent 1: “You think HRC is gonna win right? You think we should get nails and some boards in case she doesnt”
14:21:56, Agent 5: “she better win… otherwise i’m gonna be walking around with both of my guns.”
14:22:05, Agent 5: “and likely quitting on the spot”
14:28:43, Agent 1: “You should know;…..”
14:28:45, Agent 1: “that”
14:28:50, Agent 1: “I’m…..”
14:28:56, Agent 1: “with her.”
14:28:58, Agent 1: “ooooooooooooooooooo”
14:29:02, Agent 1: “show me the money”
14:29:03, Agent 5: “<:o)”
14:29:14, Agent 5: “screw you trump”

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The report also offers similar exchanges from someone labeled Attorney 2 who also worked on the email investigation. This one is from the day after the election seems to suggest maybe Attorney 2 should have done something different, apparently to prevent the outcome. The employee he/she is messaging offers a long reply trashing anyone who voted for Trump:

09:38:14, FBI Attorney 2: “I am numb.”
09:55:35, FBI Employee: “I can’t stop crying.”
10:00:13, FBI Attorney 2: “That makes me even more sad.”
10:43:20, FBI Employee: “Like, what happened?”
10:43:37, FBI Employee: “You promised me this wouldn’t happen. YOU PROMISED.”
10:43:43, FBI Employee: Okay, that might have been a lie…”
10:43:46, FBI Employee: “I’m very upset.”
10:43:47, FBI Employee: “haha”
10:51:48, FBI Attorney 2: “I am so stressed about what I could have done differently.
10:54:29, FBI Employee: “Don’t stress. None of that mattered.”
10:54:31, FBI Employee: “The FBI’s influence.”
10:59:36, FBI Attorney 2: “I don’t know. We broke the momentum.”
11:00:03, FBI Employee: “That is not so.”
11:02:22, FBI Employee: “All the people who were initially voting for her would not, and were not, swayed by any decision the FBI put out. Trump’s supporters are all poor to middle class, uneducated, lazy POS that think he will magically grant them jobs for doing nothing. They probably didn’t watch the debates, aren’t fully educated on his policies, and are stupidly wrapped up in his unmerited enthusiasm.”
11:11:43, FBI Attorney 2: “I’m just devastated. I can’t wait until I can leave today and just shut off the world for the next four days.”
11:12:06, FBI Employee: “Why are you devastated?”
11:12:18, FBI Employee: “Yes, I’m not watching tv for four years.”
11:14:16, FBI Attorney 2: “I just can’t imagine the systematic disassembly of the progress we made over the last 8 years. ACA is gone. Who knows if the rhetoric about deporting people, walls, and crap is true. I honestly feel like there is going to be a lot more gun issues, too, the crazies won finally. This is the tea party on steroids. And the GOP is going to be lost, they have to deal with an incumbent in 4 years. We have to fight this again. Also Pence is stupid.”
11:14:58, FBI Employee: “Yes that’s all true.”
11:15:01, FBI Attorney 2: “And it’s just hard not to feel like the FBI caused some of this. It was razor thin in some states.

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Asked to explain what he meant by things he “could have done differently,” Attorney 2 said, “You know, with the, with the knowledge that the information was there [on the Weiner laptop], why we didn’t work on it to, to gain access sooner, as opposed to later because it was a, a bit of a, of a gap between us learning of the information in New York and, and officially getting the case reopened again.” But when pressed on whether moving sooner on Weiner’s laptop would have changed the outcome he denied it: “Well, not, not, I don’t think that that would have alleviated the need for the letter in the Director’s eyes.”

Finally, later in November Attorney 2 had another exchange, this time with Attorney 1. Keep in mind that this exchange happened as both of them were working on the Russia investigation:

FBI Attorney 2 sent an instant message to FBI Attorney 1 commenting on the amount of money the subject of an FBI investigation had been paid while working on the Trump campaign. FBI Attorney 1 responded, “Is it making you rethink your commitment to the Trump administration?” FBI Attorney 2 replied, “Hell no.” and then added, “Viva le resistance.”

Asked about his “Viva le resistance” comment and if it meant he was going to fight the Trump administration, Attorney 2 seemed to become a little tongue-tied:

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That’s not what I was doing…. I just, again, like that, that’s just like the entire, it’s just my political view in terms of, of my preference. It wasn’t something along the lines of, you know, we’re taking certain actions in order to, you know, combat that or, or do anything like that. Like that, that was not the intent of that. That was more or less just like, you know, commentary between me and [FBI Attorney 1] in a personal friendship capacity where she is just making a joke, and I’m responding. Like, it’s not something that, that I personally believe in that instance.

Do you buy that denial? I don’t. Here’s why. Back in February of 2017, just a few months after these text messages, Politico reported that career employees at the EPA were using encrypted communications so they could quietly discuss their resistance to trump. Another report from the NY Times said EPA scientists were strategizing how to “slow-walk” President Trump’s orders. The point is, government employees really were discussing and planning a kind of internal resistance to Trump around this time. It’s not far-fetched at all.

The IG concluded that some of the messages may leave some of the senders facing professional discipline:

We believe the messages discussed in this chapter—particularly the messages that intermix work-related discussions with political commentary— potentially implicate provisions in the FBI’s Offense Code and Penalty Guidelines, which provides general categories of misconduct for which FBI employees may be disciplined…

Although we found no documentary or testimonial evidence directly connecting the political views these employees expressed in their text messages and instant messages to the specific Midyear investigative decisions we reviewed in Chapter Five, the messages cast a cloud over the FBI investigations to which these employees were assigned. Ultimately, the consequences of these actions impact not only the senders of these messages but also others who worked on these investigations and, indeed, the entire FBI.

We therefore refer this information to the FBI for its handling and consideration of whether the messages sent by the five employees listed above violates the FBI’s Offense Code of Conduct.

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That’s something, I guess, but I find it very hard to believe people who casually intermixed work and partisan politics, i.e. wondering if they could have done more to prevent Trump’s election, were playing it straight the rest of their time in the office.

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David Strom 11:20 AM | April 24, 2024
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