Trump knows the Horowitz Report is going to be so disappointingly bad for him, he’s already kicking the can down the road
More leaked details on the DOJ IG’s report from the NYT.
It looks like the report is going to be pure vintage Horowitz: finding lots of relatively minor things to criticize, but finding no substantive wrongdoing that discredits the investigation. 1/10
This is the very same conclusion that Horowitz came to in his report on the Comey FBI Clinton email investigations — to the immense frustration and disappointment of the Trumpster Dumpsters. 2/10
Keep in mind, too, that this article seems to have been leaked with the approval — probably even the encouragement — of Barr, because 3/10
every attempt is made by the leakers (who have been briefed) to emphasize the findings of sloppiness etc., while shading the important overlying story: that the Trump-Russia investigation — including the Carter Page warrant application — had a proper legal and factual basis. 4/10
If this article gives us a reliable picture of what Horowitz found out about Steele, for example, then we can conclude that the use of the Steele dossier was basically approved and cleared by Horowitz. 5/10
The dead give-away about Steele (though the Times itself doesn’t notice it) is in this passage: 6/10
Significantly, there is nothing here to suggest that Horowitz faulted the Dept for using the Steele dossier in the original, October application. If Horowitz had wanted to criticize the Dept for having had anything to do with the *dossier,* he would have done so there. 7/10
(For a timeline of the Carter Page warrant applications, see here: 8/10
The closing sentence of this article tells us everything we need to know about how the Horowitz story is going to play out. 9/10
Trump, who of course has been fully briefed by Barr on the report, kicks the can down the road, from Horowitz to Durham, to keep the “It was all a hoax” (pro-Putin) nonsense alive: 10/10
