The Justice Department’s inspector general has been focused for months on why Andrew McCabe, as the No. 2 official at the FBI, appeared not to act for about three weeks on a request to examine a batch of Hillary Clinton-related emails found in the latter stages of the 2016 election campaign, the Washington Post reports. Inspector General Michael Horowitz has been asking witnesses why FBI leadership seemed unwilling to move forward on the examination of emails found on the laptop of former congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY) until late October — about three weeks after first being alerted to the issue.
A key question is whether McCabe or anyone else at the FBI wanted to avoid taking action on the laptop findings until after the Nov. 8 election. A major line of inquiry for the inspector general has been trying to determine who at the FBI and the main Justice Department knew about the Clinton emails on the Weiner laptop, and when they learned about them. McCabe is a central figure in those inquiries. On Monday, McCabe left the FBI after a meeting with director Christopher Wray in which they discussed the inspector general’s investigation. Horowitz announced in January 2017 that he was examining the Justice Department’s handling of the Clinton investigation. His report is expected in the spring. The Weiner laptop email issue has been discussed since the election because many Clinton supporters say the FBI tilted the 2016 race toward Donald Trump when it announced in late October that it was reopening its probe into Clinton’s use of a private email server when she served as secretary of state.