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What to Watch For in Today’s Report on the F.B.I.’s Clinton Emails Investigation

The report, by the Justice Department’s inspector general, is highly anticipated, not least by President Trump.

The Justice Department. The department’s inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, began his investigation last year to scrutinize the actions of top F.B.I. officials at the time.Credit...Tom Brenner/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — A much-anticipated report about the F.B.I.’s handling of its investigation into Hillary Clinton was scheduled to be released on Thursday, and few were looking forward to it more than President Trump. Here are the big outstanding questions, and what to look for.

This has become the most important question of the report, and it is one that the inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, did not even set out to answer. He began his investigation last year to scrutinize the actions of the F.B.I. director at the time, James B. Comey, and his deputy, Andrew G. McCabe.

But Mr. Trump has pushed a theory that a secret cabal of Mrs. Clinton’s supporters inside the F.B.I. conspired to clear her of wrongdoing over her handling of classified information. This same group of agents, Mr. Trump argues, then cooked up a phony investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia as a way to undermine his presidency.

No public evidence has surfaced to prove this theory, and the inspector general is unlikely to claim a wide-ranging political conspiracy at the heart of the F.B.I. There is evidence that at least some agents on the Clinton investigation disliked Mr. Trump. But look for Mr. Trump to seize on aspects of the report that support him, and probably discard those that do not.

Mrs. Clinton’s supporters find this entire argument baffling. It was Mr. Comey, after all, who chastised her at a nationally televised news conference, and then — over the objection of the Justice Department — announced just days before Election Day that the F.B.I. was again investigating Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Trump now says the F.B.I. was on her side all along.

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James B. Comey, then the director of the F.B.I., waiting for a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to begin in May 2017.Credit...Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times

Mr. Comey was the most high-profile F.B.I. director since J. Edgar Hoover until Mr. Trump fired him in May 2017. The inspector general’s report is expected to be an unflattering book end to his career. He is likely to face sharp criticism for that news conference, in July 2016, and his announcement, in late October of that year.

Neither the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, nor his investigation is the focus of the report. But it looms over everything that will happen Thursday around the release of the report.

When the Russia investigation began, Mr. Comey made a decision that ultimately proved fateful. Rather than assign the case to agents in the field, he gave it to the same team at headquarters that had investigated Mrs. Clinton. So, any criticism of decisions in the Clinton case — no matter how unrelated to the Russia investigation — will ultimately be used by Mr. Trump to challenge the integrity of the team that began investigating his campaign.

In the final days of the Clinton investigation, the attorney general at the time, Loretta E. Lynch, held an impromptu private meeting with former President Bill Clinton when the two found themselves unexpectedly on the same tarmac at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. The meeting led to calls for Ms. Lynch to recuse herself from the investigation. She did not, but said she would defer to the F.B.I. and career prosecutors on whether to prosecute Mrs. Clinton. The tarmac meeting, as well as Ms. Lynch’s half-in-half-out response, are expected to be criticized in Thursday’s report. Ms. Lynch has already said she regrets the meeting.

Two F.B.I. officials, who were assigned to both cases, exchanged text messages that revealed strong anti-Trump sentiment. They said Mrs. Clinton “just has to win” and described a potential victory by Mr. Trump as “terrifying.”

Mr. Trump’s supporters have seized on these messages as evidence that the F.B.I. was biased against him. The inspector general is expected to criticize the officials, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, but his conclusions on the matter will be closely watched. F.B.I. regulations allow agents to express opinions both “privately and publicly on political subjects and candidates.”

Mr. Horowitz has said he is investigating whether officials improperly disclosed information about the Clinton case to journalists. But one of the most intriguing questions involves the potential leak of information to one of Mr. Trump’s key campaign surrogates, Rudolph W. Giuliani. Mr. Giuliani appeared on Fox News in October 2016 and hinted that big news was about to break:

“I mean, I’m talking about some pretty big surprises,” he said in one interview. In another, he referenced Mrs. Clinton and said he expected the surprises to surface in the coming days.

Two days later, Mr. Comey broke the news that the F.B.I. was once again investigating Mrs. Clinton and her emails. Mr. Comey has said he ordered an investigation into that disclosure but it is not clear what came of it.

Mr. Giuliani is now a lawyer for Mr. Trump, who has railed against inappropriate disclosures to reporters.

The inspector general is expected to criticize officials at F.B.I. headquarters for the speed at which they responded to the discovery of new emails on a laptop belonging to the estranged husband of one of Mrs. Clinton’s top aides. Critics, including some inside the F.B.I., have suggested that officials at headquarters were uninterested in revisiting the investigation before the election.

The report is expected to run more than 500 pages, and it is likely to criticize many of these decisions and more. It is unclear where Mr. Horowitz will come down on the larger question of whether any of these decisions affected the outcome of the case. Inspectors general do not often second-guess investigative conclusions, and it is not clear that Mr. Horowitz will weigh in on whether the decision not to charge Mrs. Clinton was the right one.

As for whether Mr. Comey cost Mrs. Clinton the election? She says he did. Some political scientists have pointed to data to argue that point. But that is one area the report is unlikely to touch.

Matt Apuzzo is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter based in Washington. He has covered law enforcement and security matters for more than a decade and is the co-author of the book “Enemies Within.” More about Matt Apuzzo

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