When Barack Obama appointed Michael Horowitz to be the inspector general for the Department of Justice in April of 2012, it might have seemed a safe choice for the entitled petty nobility who really run things in Washington.
Horowitz earned his law degree from Harvard, magna cum laude, no less. Horowitz spent eight years as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, nicknamed the “Sovereign District of New York,” for its ability to resist Republican presidents who think that winning an election gives them the right to run things. But there were signs even then that Horowitz wasn’t going to play ball.
In 1995, the Department of Justice awarded him the “Distinguished Service Award,” for his role in exposing and prosecuting a ring of dirty cops in the 30th Precinct of the New York Police Department. Horowitz is from a long-ago era; before law schools taught that the law is mere putty to be molded to achieve social and political objectives.
Within months of his appointment to the Justice Department inspector general role, Horowitz issued a stinging 514-page report on the notorious, “Operation Fast and Furious,” during which undercover federal agents supplied Mexican cartels with weapons. Within hours of that report, a dozen employees of the Department of Justice and the ATF faced punishment or retired in disgrace.
The Russia collusion hoax will stand as the greatest political scandal in American history, if history remains a thing after the revolution consolidates its control over the truth. But how did the conspiracy come to light?
Author Lee Smith wrote the definitive monograph detailing how Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) led a team of investigators to expose key elements of the conspiracy. We have their work to thank for uncovering the explosive bombshell that Hillary Clinton paid for the infamous Steele Dossier (read here, here, and here for the contemporaneous stories). But there was a parallel track that led to that unravelling of the explosive details of the government’s collusion with the DNC’s effort to frame Trump. And it all started with a request from a pair of Democratic Congressmen outraged over the FBI’s handling of the Anthony Weiner laptop.
In September of 2016, an FBI agent took possession of a laptop while investigating allegations that Anthony Weiner tried to entice underage girls into sexual activity. That laptop contained a cache of documents and emails between Hillary Clinton and her confidant Huma Abedin (who then was Weiner’s wife.) The mere existence of these emails seemed to contradict claims made by Clinton that she had either permanently deleted or disclosed her emails relevant to an investigation into her time as Secretary of State. The FBI went into cover-up mode ordering the agent to erase his computer and threatening him with prosecution if he shared the information outside the FBI.
But the FBI became concerned that it might get caught suppressing the story. So on October 28, 2016, then-FBI director, James Comey, notified Congress by letter that the FBI had uncovered new Clinton emails.
This pre-election October surprise enraged Democrats who initially saw the release as a political hit on Clinton. On November 4, 2016, the late Reps. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) and John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.), then ranking members of the House Committees in Oversight and Judiciary, wrote Horowitz a fateful letter demanding he investigate the FBI’s conduct during the investigation of the Clinton emails. Horowitz heeded the call but not to the effect hoped for by the Democrats.
The Russia collusion hoax perpetrators engineered a sweeping special counsel project to entice President Trump into “obstructing” the sham investigation into allegations, already known to be a hoax. In the summer of 2017, Horowitz approached the Mueller team with text messages he uncovered between two of the Mueller team members. Rather than finding a pro-Trump FBI bias as the Democrats suspected, Horowitz found explosive evidence of FBI agent Peter Strzok abusing his power to help Clinton in her investigation and harm Trump with a bogus Trump/Russia investigation. Mueller removed Strzok and his lover Lisa Page from the team. Following that, Mueller’s team made sure their phones were wiped—preventing any additional embarrassing texts from emerging.
Horowitz then fired bombshell after bombshell at the Russia collusion hoax project. We learned that the FBI commingled its political objectives with the investigations into Clinton and Trump. We learned that then-Director James Comey mishandled sensitive investigative information in order to take a shot at Trump. We learned the Deputy Director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe, lied to investigators about his role in a leak in order to deflect heat from himself. We learned that the FBI doctored emails to manipulate the FISA court. We learned how the Mueller team scrubbed Strzok and Page’s phones of incriminating texts.
The Justice Department circled the wagons as prosecutors repeatedly declined prosecution of the hoax perpetrators. But that wasn’t the fault of Horowitz. He uncovered ample evidence where journalists and prosecutors helped facilitate the coverup. If it hadn’t been for Horowitz, the Mueller team would have been totally unchecked. The hoax might have worked and the president likely would have been removed using the fabrications of a politicized FBI. The history of the last four years would have read much differently but for this quiet hero who saved the truth from powerful conspirators. More importantly, it will never work quite the same way again. Americans now understand that the Justice Department and the FBI are not to be trusted when political power is at stake.
When Horowitz finally leaves, there will be no complaining by a legacy media which cheered censorship of the true but politically-inconvenient Hunter Biden corruption stories. The FBI couldn’t care less about congressional oversight or the direction of the elected president. It’s a power unto itself, and thanks to Director Christopher Wray’s leadership, no longer appears capable of being embarrassed. After Horowitz, there will be little else to hold it accountable. So before the opportunity is lost forever, the president should thank him on behalf of the American people. Horowitz and his staff should receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Americans should know his name and his important work so that his successors might follow his example.