Washington Post

The report from the Department of Justice’s inspector general on the handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation finds that the FBI’s decision not to prosecute Hillary Clinton was untainted by bias or politics. This lays waste to one of the most important narratives pushed by President Dionald Trump and his allies in the quest to undermine special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation by claiming law enforcement is riddled with anti-Trump corruption.

President Donald Trump said that he had been “totally exonerated” by a new Justice Department report that is highly critical of several key FBI figures in the Hillary Clinton email probe, including former FBI Director James Comey. The report by the department’s inspector general offered no findings regarding the ongoing investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller III into possible coordination between Russia and Trump’s campaign in the 2016 election.

The closeness of the 2016 Presidential election — 78,000 votes in three states gave Donald Trump the victory — means that small things could have swung the result. So, too, could big things, like former FBI Director James Comey’s late-campaign revelation that the bureau had found new emails that might be relevant to the server investigation. They weren’t, but the announcement resuscitated the subject right as voters were about to head to the polls. However, the inspector general’s report reinforces an unimportant point about this response to the 2016 election.