James Comey was ‘insubordinate’ in Hillary Clinton email inquiry, watchdog says
Inspector general for US Justice Department says ex-FBI director ‘departed from norms’ but wasn’t motivated by political bias
Former FBI director James Comey was “insubordinate” in handling the investigation into Hillary Clinton, damaging the bureau and the US Justice Department’s image of impartiality even though he wasn’t motivated by politics, the department’s watchdog found.
Although the report issued on Thursday by Inspector General Michael Horowitz did not deal directly with special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russia meddling in the 2016 US election and possible collusion with those around US President Donald Trump, he and his Republican allies in Congress were primed to seize on it as evidence of poor judgment and anti-Trump bias within the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department.
The inspector general said it was “extraordinary and insubordinate for Comey to conceal his intentions from his superiors, the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General, for the admitted purpose of preventing them from telling him not to make the statement, and to instruct his subordinates in the FBI to do the same.”
Comey defended himself in an op-ed published in The New York Times after the report was released.
“In 2016, my team faced an extraordinary situation – something I thought of as a 500-year flood – offering no good choices and presenting some of the hardest decisions I ever had to make,” Comey wrote.