With the IG report dropping on Monday, we’ve seen an interesting bit of spin coming from former FBI officials and the media. Namely, they are proclaiming that the report somehow “vindicates” the FBI’s behavior because the IG found no “documentary” evidence of bias in the start of the Trump-Russia investigation.

Take James Comey’s ranting op-ed, for example.

So it was all lies. No treason. No spying on the campaign. No tapping Trumps wires. It was just good people trying to protect America. https://t.co/9nurCaIBq2

— James Comey (@Comey) December 9, 2019

In fact, the IG report did not find there was “no spying.” Instead, it made the very specific claim that there were no spies put inside the Trump campaign. It’s already been confirmed that multiple spies (or informants if you want to sanitize it) were run against Trump campaign figures. That’s not in debate and certainly falls within the realm of “spying.”

Further, we know the FISA warrant on Page was retroactive and allowed access to all manner of Trump campaign communications via email and phone records. In fact, Bill Barr himself pointed this out this week, when in an interview some “journalist” brought up that Page was already out of the campaign at the time of the warrant.

Past Comey, we’ve seen a continual barrage of media outlets pushing out articles asserting that the GOP were “proved wrong” by the IG report. It’s quite the opposite. We were right about the FISA abuse and targeting of Page, which formed the central plank of the allegations against the FBI. We were right about the Steele Dossier being garbage while it was still being used extensively by the FBI. We were right about partisans at the FBI doctoring evidence to get access to the Trump campaign via the Page warrant.

But what about the one thing the media claims they were right about? I.E. that there was no bias in the opening of the investigation? Even that is a misreading of the IG report and false.

And note the IG's material caveat:

"We also did not receive satisfactory explanations for the errors or problems we identified." https://t.co/dZNDukXHSz

— Jeff Carlson (@themarketswork) December 10, 2019

What Horowitz was actually saying in his report was that he had no members of the FBI admit to their misdeeds. That should have been a given as something that wasn’t going to happen. Because the IG is not allowed to make suppositions, he had to report that he found no “documentary” evidence of bias. That does not mean that bias didn’t exist. We know it existed via the multitude of text messages and emails that showed clear bias against Trump.

To top it all off, Horowitz does say that he was able to reach no satisfactory conclusion on why so many “errors” occurred, and all in a direction that just so happened to target Trump. The clear indication there is that it’s still a perfectly reasonable conclusion that Trump was targeted for partisan reasons. The only caveat is that the IG couldn’t definitively show that via admissions of guilt, either directly or indirectly with documentation.

And that brings us back to Bill Barr and John Durham, who put out statements essentially saying they have more evidence and a wider reach than Horowitz and that they disagree with his conclusions (or lack thereof). It’s unlikely either man would have made that statement if they didn’t have the goods on someone. To do so would be counter-intuitive.

So while Comey and the media may be taking a victory lap, the truth is that the IG report was damning and came nowhere close to vindicating the actions of the FBI and its leadership. To pretend otherwise is pure delusion.

UPDATE: 

GRAHAM asks if @comey is vindicated by IG report, as he's claiming.
HOROWITZ: "The activities we found here don't vindicate anybody who touched this."

— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) December 11, 2019

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