The sour legacy of the 2016 election is further tightening its grip on Washington after the release of a critical report on the FBI’s conduct while investigating scandals linked to the vote. And a new legal front is opening with stunning allegations about the Trump family’s behavior during the campaign.
President Donald Trump’s swift bid to inaccurately paint the Justice Department inspector general’s report as proof that special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation is biased is deepening cavernous divides in the nation’s capital, giving a fresh battering to bedrock legal institutions and further undermining the notion that a shared objective truth underwrites American political life.
Reaction to the report is also offering an unsettling preview of how the political power centers are likely to splinter along partisan lines when Mueller eventually reveals the results of the Russia investigation.
It was a spectacle that suggests that recriminations over the election, and the political wars unleashed in its aftermath, mean that there will never be some national cathartic moment of unity when the nation can finally move on from the debacle of 2016.
Instead, the damage from the nastiest election in decades seems to multiply by the week, stifling all efforts to slake its poison, and looks certain to linger for years.
Trump pounced on the report Friday, referencing a text message between FBI agent Peter Strzok and lawyer Lisa Page that spoke of a need to “stop” Trump from becoming President as proof that the Clinton email and Russia investigations were politically motivated.
“The report yesterday, maybe more importantly than anything, it totally exonerates me. There was no collusion. There was no obstruction,” the President told reporters at the White House.
“You’ll see bias against me and millions and tens of millions of my followers, and that really is a disgrace.”
In fact, the inspector general made no finding that exonerates Trump in the investigation into whether his campaign colluded with Russia or the President obstructed justice by firing former FBI Director James Comey.
It found that Strzok’s views did not have any impact on investigative decisions taken by the FBI in the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. It did not make any determination on whether his political leanings had any impact on the Russia investigation.
On the face of it, the report was unimpeachably reasonable. It offered something for everyone involved in the tortured melodrama of the last election, should they chose to salve their wounds and move on.
“It is thorough, it is detailed, it is reasoned, it is not histrionic,” said Preet Bharara, former US attorney for the Southern District of New York, who is now a CNN legal analyst.
The report found that Comey infringed departmental norms and acted in an “extraordinary and…
