laptop. and does it say anything as to the issues of collusion and obstruction in that russian investigation? we don t go into any issues related to the russia investigation beyond what i mentioned. last friday when he was talking about the i.g. report president donald trump said the special counsel investigation led by robert mueller, quote, has been totally discredited. mr. horowitz, does your report show any reason to doubt robert mueller s integrity or discredit any statements he made? i m not going to make a judgment on special counsel mueller s investigation. i want to stay within the four corners of your report. did you address at that? we did not address the credibility of the special counsel s investigation here. we laid out what occurred and we laid out what individuals did in october where it touches the russia investigation. last thursday senate majority leader mitch mcconnell said in
an interview with the washington examiner he wanted the mueller investigation to conclude. he said, quote, if the i.g. is through, why can t the mueller investigation finally wrap up? was there any connection in substance or duration between what you were tasked in doing and what robert mueller is tasked in doing? again, other than the issues that we talked about where we identified text messages and brought them to his attention. we do not have any connections, interactions in that regard. director wray, my colleague, senator leahy and oergs have raised the question about the new york field office and leaks in that field office, and there are quotes in the report relative to mr. comey s concern that new york field office would leak information, and that s one of the reasons why he made certain decisions as senator leahy said.
quote. general horowitz, does your report totally exonerate president trump? i m going to stick, senator, to what our report does speak to which is the handling of the clinton e-mail investigation and to the extent it touches on the russia investigation, it does it as we lay out here when the weiner laptop comes up in october and i can t speak beyond that to what how this report might impact the russia investigation or what individuals think how it may impact the russia investigation. i ask you to clarify that. you can t speak to whether your report exonerates because it does or doesn t? what are you saying? we did not investigate, as we laid out here, when we saw those text messages, many of which are in that july/august time period, we made it quite clear here that this review does not touch on the russia investigation with the exception of what occurred in october with the weiner
a few people here were in the senate and remembers watergate. i tend to disagree with it. i d say the confidential sources are a routine investigative tool. i have a document that is publicly available. the fbi s online library. it s redacted interview from the clinton investigation. it shows that the fbi used a confidential human source in september 2015, well into secretary clinton s campaign for president. so director, is the possible use of confidential sources in either the clinton or russia investigation show wrong doing by the fbi? as you alluded to, we use n
reason that can quickly become the ends justify the means. what we need to do is do the right thing in the right way. to not let the end justify the means but let our means justify the end. general horowitz, i believe your report is comprehensive as it was and i commend you on the great care that you have just undertaken, i don t necessarily agree with every word including no finding of no bias, but i think your findings call into question the credibility of the whole clinton e-mail investigation and cast a cloud over the russia investigation because the same people that led the clinton e-mail investigation were leading the russian investigation until at least such time as director mueller, the special counsel terminated their services because of conflict of interest. do you share those concerns? i share those concerns. i wrote here it did cast a cloud