Senate FBI hearing takes twists and turns, including a 'wangdoodle' reference
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Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz, left, and FBI Director Christopher Wray. (Photo: Alex Brandon/AP)
WASHINGTON
— It was not, perhaps, the most somber moment in the history of the
U.S. Senate. In the midst of reciting a list of complaints about FBI
agents allegedly swayed by their own anti-Trump animus, Sen. John
Kennedy, R-La., stopped speaking and looked up. He had been reading from
some of the messages those agents privately exchanged, and which were
later uncovered by investigators.
“Rhymes with ‘wangdoodle,’” a seemingly perturbed Kennedy said. That wasn’t the word or rhyme. But the point was made.
That
was just one standout moment at Monday’s Senate Judiciary Committee
hearing. FBI Director Christopher Wray and Michael Horowitz, the
Department of Justice inspector general, were present on Capitol Hill
for the occasion.
Last week, Horowitz released a lengthy report that lambasted then FBI Director James Comey
for his handling of the probe into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private
email server during her time as secretary of state. Horowitz’s report
also found that high-ranking officials within the FBI bore animus toward
Trump, though the report pointedly does not ascribe political motive to
any actions the agency undertook in regard to Clinton or President
Trump, who fired Comey last year.
Both sides of the political divide have found reason to celebrate the report. Trump falsely deemed
himself “totally exonerated” last Friday, in a seeming conflation of
Horowitz’s report and the work of special counsel Robert Mueller. The
two investigations are unrelated. Clinton supporters, meanwhile, found
evidence for their belief that Comey’s Oct. 28, 2016, letter, in which
he declared a reopening of the investigation into Clinton’s emails,
robbed the Democratic candidate of momentum in the election’s final lap.
Monday’s
hearing also gave yet another endorsement to the idea that the U.S. is
fated to relitigate the 2016 election until the end of days.
Sen.
Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, seemed to
indicate as much with his opening statement. “The details in this report
confirm what American people have suspected for a long time,” he said.
“Hillary Clinton got the kid glove treatment.”
Grassley
went on to suggest that Mueller’s probe into the Trump campaign and
Russian electoral meddling was similarly tainted by political bias.
Mueller himself is a Republican, but Trump has taken to calling some of
his investigators “13 Angry Democrats” because of their supposed affiliations.
“The
Justice Department faces a serious credibility problem,” Grassley said,
“because millions of Americans suspect that there is a double
standard.”
Senate
Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, left, shakes hands
with FBI Director Christopher Wray. (Photo: Alex Brandon/AP)
Democrats
had apparently read an entirely different report. Ranking member Sen.
Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., focused her opening statement on Comey, who
angered Democrats in 2016 for his statements about the Clinton emails.
Horowitz said he found that Comey’s decision to publicize the decisions
not to bring criminal charges and to subsequently reopen the
investigation amount to an act of “insubordination.”
Frank
Montoya Jr., a former high-ranking FBI official, told Yahoo News that
the Horowitz report came in the context of a disagreement on autonomy
between the Department of Justice and the FBI. “DOJ has never liked the
fact the FBI sees itself as independent,” he said. Montoya added that
while Horowitz “may have been critical about Comey’s actions after the
email investigation, he was unequivocal that any bias (real or
perceived) had zero impact on the decision of prosecutors not to charge
Clinton. That says something for the integrity of the investigation
itself. Despite all the outside drama, he’s saying it remained intact.”
Running
nearly 600 pages, Horowitz’s report also gave both parties plenty of
room for suspicion, accusation and recrimination. Feinstein wondered why
there were “multiple leaks to the press” about the Clinton email
investigation during the 2016 campaign, but none about the budding
inquest into potential collusion between Trump and Russia. “This unquestionably harmed candidate Clinton and helped candidate Trump,” Feinstein said.
She and other Democrats tried on several occasions to focus the hearing on Rudy Giuliani,
the former New York mayor who proved a feisty Trump surrogate during
the campaign — and now the public face of Trump’s legal team pushing
back against Mueller. Three days before Comey announced the reopening of
the Clinton investigation, Giuliani mused
on Fox News about “a couple of surprises” that would prove “enormously
effective” were coming. Horowitz declined to discuss how Giuliani came
across this information, though he suggested that there was an “ongoing”
investigation.
President Trump, James Comey. (Photos: left, Evan Vucci/AP, and Susan Walsh)
Republicans,
for their part, kept the focus on the five FBI officials who’d
exchanged anti-Trump messages, in particular top investigator Peter
Strzok and lawyer Lisa Page, who were romantically involved and have
been pilloried by Trump’s Twitter feed. Wray said the agents in question
would be referred for disciplinary action, while new guidelines and
training would be instituted, including about proper relations with the
media. (Horowitz’s report depicts some agents as too friendly with
reporters).
“I can only imagine what else is out there,” remarked Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.
At
the same time, Wray defended the fundamental integrity of his
department, and drew a sharp line between Comey’s alleged errors and the
department’s present-day work, specifically on the investigation of the
Trump campaign. “I don’t believe special counsel Mueller is on a ‘witch
hunt,’” he said during a later round of questioning. Trump’s preferred
term for the investigation is “WITCH HUNT!”
Democrats
tried to ask questions that forced the FBI officials to explain — in
effect, to the president himself — that their report did not focus on
Russia and thus in no way exonerated him on that matter, as the
commander in chief has repeatedly claimed. “We did not look into
collusion questions,” Horowitz said flatly in the middle of an exchange
with Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.
Leahy
crystallized Democratic sentiment when he posited: “[If] the FBI were
trying to throw the election to Hillary Clinton, it could not have done a
worse job. Every single misstep by the FBI damaged Hillary Clinton and
helped Donald Trump.”
Republicans
answered by returning to the anti-Trump messages sent by FBI officials,
a powerful if inexact refutation of the Democratic point. Kennedy, the
Louisiana senator, read several of these.
One,
from Page to Strzok, was about a comment Trump made. It was here that
the gentleman from Louisiana was forced, for propriety’s sake, to resort
to “wangdoodle.”
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