Much has been made today of AG Barr supposedly disagreeing with IG Horowitz on his report. First it’s important to remember that the report came from the Washington Post which has lied so much that you always need to take a wait and see attitude.

Now I personally believe that it’s likely to be true. Shocking I know, but to understand my position you have to understand the whole IG setup. IG’s are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The DOJ IG has two masters. He is technically under the AG but really is the Congress’ spy on the Executive branch. So remember in the present case he wants to make sure he doesn’t alienate either the AG or the Congress. That’s why I can easily see him putting out a report that lays out damning facts and then drawing wishy washy conclusions

Now I have had considerable experience with IG’s and I can tell you they are extremely political. In one case in which I was personally involved, the IG issued a report which his friends in the House wanted. As an aside it resulted in my picture being on the front page of the NYT. The report was totally incompetent and contrary to federal personnel law but as I have previously stated, they don’t know what they are talking about. At any rate, the result was that I and a few others were sued in Texas, although we were all in Maryland. Normally DOJ would represent us but the IG tried to get the head of our agency to tell DOJ not to represent us because he was afraid that we would sue him for his incompetent report. Fortunately the head of the agency told him to pound sand and so did DOJ and in their response to the complaint against us, DOJ said the IG report was totally and completely wrong as a matter of law. Of course we won.