Elizabeth Goitein, the co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, in an otherwise reasonable series of thoughts on FISA abuse, says, "First, the report confirms that neither the investigation generally nor the FISA applications in particular were motivated by political bias. No big surprise there; despite what Trump would have us believe, the FBI isn't actually a bunch of bleeding-heart liberals." Mother Jones' Kevin Drum adopted a more reasonable-sounding summation of the report - "OIG Report Says FBI Is Incompetent, But Harbors No Anti-Trump Bias" - that reflected a lot of the nonpartisan, mainstream journalistic analysis of the report.
Despite what everyone is saying about it, the report doesn't actually rule out political bias by the FBI. What the report actually says is, "We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced his decision." The IG report also goes on to say that political bias couldn't be fingered as the source of decision-making because certain decisions were "Reached by a consensus among the Crossfire Hurricane agents and analysts." In terms of causality, this essentially means the FBI circled the wagons and made it hard to determine precise, documented motivations for each specific decision.
To some extent, the IG report suggests a comedy of errors is to blame for what happened: "That so many basic and fundamental errors were made by three separate, handpicked teams on one of the most sensitive FBI investigations that was briefed to the highest levels within the FBI, and that FBI officials would eventually be subjected to close scrutiny, raised significant questions regarding the FBI chain of command's management and supervision of the FISA process."
There are plenty of reasons aside from the IG report to conclude that bias was a non-trivial factor explaining much of the FBI's incredible misconduct.
Relying on the word of such FBI officials to believe the investigation into Trump wasn't political seems pretty credulous, and even more so after the latest IG report.
Finally, if the genesis of the investigation wasn't political - how do you explain, as the IG reports in detail, the bizarre continuance of the investigation and repeated renewal of FISA warrants that happened after the FBI became aware that key facts undergirding the Steele dossier and FISA application didn't hold water? Was this just some kind of inexplicable bureaucratic inertia, or having failed to keep Trump from getting elected, was the Bureau trying to undermine his presidency?
The more reasonable frame is to look at the IG report and the totality of what we know about the FBI's conduct and ask, is it more likely than not that top FBI officials let their personal politics compel them to engage in reckless behavior that violated the civil rights of Trump campaign officials? And as a secondary but very serious concern, was that reckless behavior an attempt by FBI officials to affect the election and later hamper Trump's presidency?
https://thefederalist.com/2019/12/11/the-ig-report-didnt-come-close-to-debunking-the-idea-the-fbi-was-politically-biased/
Despite what everyone is saying about it, the report doesn't actually rule out political bias by the FBI. What the report actually says is, "We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced his decision." The IG report also goes on to say that political bias couldn't be fingered as the source of decision-making because certain decisions were "Reached by a consensus among the Crossfire Hurricane agents and analysts." In terms of causality, this essentially means the FBI circled the wagons and made it hard to determine precise, documented motivations for each specific decision.
To some extent, the IG report suggests a comedy of errors is to blame for what happened: "That so many basic and fundamental errors were made by three separate, handpicked teams on one of the most sensitive FBI investigations that was briefed to the highest levels within the FBI, and that FBI officials would eventually be subjected to close scrutiny, raised significant questions regarding the FBI chain of command's management and supervision of the FISA process."
There are plenty of reasons aside from the IG report to conclude that bias was a non-trivial factor explaining much of the FBI's incredible misconduct.
Relying on the word of such FBI officials to believe the investigation into Trump wasn't political seems pretty credulous, and even more so after the latest IG report.
Finally, if the genesis of the investigation wasn't political - how do you explain, as the IG reports in detail, the bizarre continuance of the investigation and repeated renewal of FISA warrants that happened after the FBI became aware that key facts undergirding the Steele dossier and FISA application didn't hold water? Was this just some kind of inexplicable bureaucratic inertia, or having failed to keep Trump from getting elected, was the Bureau trying to undermine his presidency?
The more reasonable frame is to look at the IG report and the totality of what we know about the FBI's conduct and ask, is it more likely than not that top FBI officials let their personal politics compel them to engage in reckless behavior that violated the civil rights of Trump campaign officials? And as a secondary but very serious concern, was that reckless behavior an attempt by FBI officials to affect the election and later hamper Trump's presidency?
https://thefederalist.com/2019/12/11/the-ig-report-didnt-come-close-to-debunking-the-idea-the-fbi-was-politically-biased/
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