IG Horowitz to Senate Panel: We "Didn't Credit" the FBI's Excuses For All Of Its "Errors," Because Those Explanations Are Not Credible

He said something similar to the House panel, but, for the leftists and NeverTrumpers out there (but I repeat myself) who continue insisting that Horowitz "cleared" the FBI of having no political bias and of having not committed any intentional deception -- Horowitz again underlines that he did not conclude that, that there may well be bias, but he could not conclude there was bias or intent because no one admitted to it.

But he also says the explanations they offered in their own defense were just not believable, either.

[H]orowitz reaffirmed today that his investigation did not rule out political bias as an explanation for the multiple failures of the FBI regarding a FISA warrant on Carter Page. What the IG did conclude is that the explanations given by the FBI for those failures were not credible.

Senator Josh Hawley asked Horowitz, "What's the explanation? Why over time would all of these people, four times over the space of half a year, deliberately mislead a federal court?"

"We don't make a conclusion as to the intent here so want to be clear about that," Horowitz replied. He then added, "But that was precisely the concern we had…is what you laid out. There are so many errors. We couldn't reach a conclusion or make a determination on what motivated those failures other than we did not credit, what I lay out here, the explanations we got."

"Yeah, so it certainly wasn't the reasons that they offered to you," Hawley said.

"We didn't credit that. And frankly this is one of the reasons we weren't able to but didn't reach a conclusion is we now have the court weighing in and the court wanting to understand what happened here as well, Horowitz said.

NeverTrump liberal Chris Wallace needs to re-read Horowitz's testimony, because Chris Wallace continuously asserts that Horowitz affirmatively "cleared" the FBI of bias or deliberate criminal action, when Horowitz keeps saying, explicitly, that he did no such clearing at all, and in fact there is a lot of circumstantial evidence to suggest bias and intentional criminality, but his office does not permit him to draw conclusions on circumstantial evidence, but only direct admissions made in interviews or documents.

Strangely, Chris Wallace also insisted that the Mueller Report did not clear Trump of obstruction of justice -- it merely failed to find evidence of it -- but here, Chris Wallace takes the inconsistent position that absence of conclusive evidence equals "clearing" the FBI of intentional wrongdoing or bias.

I wonder if any of Chris Wallace's colleagues will ever have the balls to ask him why he uses two different rules, a more lenient one to protect his Democrat allies, and a more punishing one to impugn his Republican enemies.

Via tami:

To be clear, this isn't Horowitz repudiating his past claim that he found no documentary or testimonial evidence (that is, admitting it) that actions were taken, or not taken, due to political bias. But he is admitting there was a lot of political bias, and illegal and/or unethical actions were taken.

Was there a connection between political bias and those criminal actions? His formal answer is that he cannot find documentary or testimonial evidence for that (that is, no one admitted it), but he also can't "credit" explanations/excuses offered by the FBI, either.

posted by Ace of Spades at 05:51 PM

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