The Two Words This Ex-Rolling Stone Editor Had for the New Comey Docs

What a mess. What a sham. We knew this was a circus, but now we have the documents, and two things stand out about how the FBI conducted its investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email server. One, why did this 35-page annex to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz take so long to declassify? Second, why was the Clinton campaign receiving daily briefings on the FBI's activities under Loretta Lynch?

You can fill in the blanks, but the entire work is a study in prevarication and political bias. The conclusions write themselves: then-FBI Director James Comey wanted to wrap up this probe—aka the Midyear Review—but kept the Russian collusion hoax on recycle to hamstring Donald Trump.

Even former Rolling Stone contributing editor Matt Taibbi found the trove to be “bizarre,” adding that a lot of it reads like “keystone cops.” An epic opera in how DC, the bureau, and others involved in this clown show simply refused to review the several thumb drives that were pertinent to the Clinton email probe but were never analyzed (via Racket News):

The report focuses on a previously-undisclosed inquiry into eight thumb drives of material from a source called “T1.” This source delivered reams of correspondence from American officials purloined by a foreign (likely Russian) intelligence service, as well as analytical documents in Russian. Horowitz was circumspect about their provenance:
[…]
The FBI’s apparent failure to investigate a serious breach of official correspondence, all the way up to the President’s office, seems the most important revelation. Former Grassley aide and chief counsel to the Judiciary Committee Jason Foster, now of Empower Oversight, said these releases compared the FBI’s handling of Midyear Exam to a foundering ship.
“They’re not just ignoring the hole in the hull,” Foster said. “They’re on purpose looking in the other direction, not even investigating how much water is coming in.”
[…]
This document, which Comey and the FBI said they deemed not credible, nonetheless contained analysis of the stolen American correspondence with an eyebrow-raising piece of gossip: that “the political director of the Hillary Clinton staff, Amanda Renteria, regularly receives information from Loretta Lynch of the Department of Justice, on the plans and intentions of the FBI”:
[…]
A large part of the report reads like a Keystone Cops tale and describes the “various reasons” the FBI found not to review the eight thumb drives.
One section describes how the Midyear investigators just got “sidetracked”; another said interest “just dropped off”; another FBI attorney said she just did not “think it was essential” to open the drive; another noted the idea “never got traction” with the Midyear investigators; and still another said there were concerns that some of the “victim information” may have been privileged. Famed FBI agent/texter Peter Strzok said opening the thumb drives would have been a “logical lead,” but the decision was “above his level” and “opaque” to him.
As Grassley noted in his press release, agents didn’t even try to peek in search of interesting intelligence. The report, the Senator said, “shows the drives should have been immediately reviewed for foreign intelligence purposes, but were not.”
[…]
The declassified report stresses a different angle. It shows Comey in May of 2016 told staff there was an “extraordinary sense of urgency” to wrap up Midyear Exam, which in a curious detail was finished almost exactly “midyear,” on July 5, 2016. The FBI hurried to wrap up investigation of a major real security breach at the earliest opportunity. Meanwhile, the Bureau used the flimsiest of pretexts to blow the Trump-Russia probe up into an epic, years-long affair.