This has probably been the worst week of Donald Trump's entire presidency*, and his Friday night won't be getting any better. The long-anticipated DOJ Inspector General's report is about to drop and the New York Times is reporting that it will not show any political bias or anti-Trump motives from the ranks of FBI leadership. So, conspiracy theory DEBUNKED. Officially.
To be fair, the report will allegedly show low level FBI staffers who made errors and omissions on some documents related to the FISA warrant of Carter Page, but that it would not have changed the approval or evidence used to secure the wiretap.
The report is due to be made public on December 9th, but the New York Times summarized many of its key findings as being particularly devestating to Donald Trump and his supporters who have long clung to the narrative that Trump was a victim of a witchhunt and a politically motivated Deep State effort to take him down by Never Trumpers and Obama holdovers. For years, Trump has insulted and degraded the hard working men and women of the FBI. Horowitz's report does not find ANY "politically biased actions by top officials" and directly clears Jim Comey, Andrew McCabe and Peter Strzok.
The only one specific person that the IG found may have violated FBI policy was related to the forms about the FISA warrant for Carter Page. But, Horowitz "did not assert in the draft report that any of the problems he found were so material that the court would have rejected the Justice Department’s requests to continue surveilling Mr. Page."
Early on Friday, Trump made a bananas phone call into FOX and Friends and during that call, he again brought up the now debunked conspiracy theory that alledged that the FBI was "spying on my campaign and it went right to the top and everybody knows it and now we’re going to find out” if “they tried to overthrow the presidency.”
Well, it looks like Mr. Horowitz's report will quash that theory.
The report also allegedly demolishes conspiracy theories related to the origins of the Russia Investigation and the future Mueller report. The report makes it clear that the FBI had met the threshold for opening the investigation and there was no conspiracy. Another flashpoint was mysterious "Professor", Joseph Mifsud, who was alleged to have damaging intelligence on Hillary Clinton. He was found not to be an FBI informant. That also negates another conspiracy theory thread. The report also shows that none of the evidence used as justification for the opening of the investigation came from any portion of the Steele Dossier or any CIA sources, killing yet another conspiracy theory.
Donald Trump, The Dumb Son (Jr), Hannity, Tucker and Laura Ingraham are losing more talking points by the day. Trump, for his part, seems unwilling to accept that it is over, telling Fox and Friends that the Durham report will be "coming out shortly.” Maybe he is hoping that will present a more favorable view of his whackjob theories?
How long until Trump tweets that IG Horowitz is a secret Never Trumper?
