JONATHAN ERNST/ REUTERS
Inspector General Michael Horowitz said Thursday in his highly-anticipated report that former FBI Director James Comey “deviated” from FBI and Justice Department procedures while conducting the Hillary Clinton probe, according to The New York Times. “While we did not find that these decisions were the result of political bias on Comey’s part, we nevertheless concluded that by departing so clearly and dramatically from FBI and department norms, the decisions negatively impacted the perception of the FBI and the department as fair administrators of justice,” Horowitz wrote in the report’s conclusion.
One of the most damning pieces of evidence uncovered by the report, notes The Washington Post, was a series of text messages between investigator Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page. In August 2016, the report notes, Strzok assured Page that “we’ll stop” Trump from making it to the White House. When Page replied “[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Strzok said that “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it.” Mueller removed Strzok from the Clinton probe last December, after it was revealed that the pair had exchanged another series of anti-Trump messages. Bloomberg News reports Trump and his supporters “are primed to use it as evidence of poor judgment and anti-Trump bias within the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department.”