by Nancy LeTourneau

December 12, 2019

...

I was concerned that there appeared to be in the media a number of stories that might have been based on communications reporters or nonreporters like Rudy Giuliani were having with people in the New York field office. In particular, in I want to say mid October, maybe a little bit later, Mr. Giuliani was making statements that appeared to be based on his knowledge of workings inside the FBI New York. And then my recollection is there were other stories that were in the same ballpark that gave me a general concern that we may have a leak problem — unauthorized disclosure problem out of New York, and so I asked that it be investigated.

The rogue agents in the FBI’s New York field office were leaking information to Giuliani (and Devin Nunes as well), so Comey’s announcement was an effort to get out ahead of that story. Engagement Labs documented the impact of that on the election.

Most decisively, there was a sudden change in the net sentiment results that followed immediately after FBI Director James Comey released his Oct. 28 letter to Congress about a renewed investigation of Clinton emails. Immediately afterwards, there was a 17-point drop in net sentiment for Clinton, and an 11-point rise for Trump, enough for the two candidates to switch places in the rankings, with Clinton in more negative territory than Trump. At a time when opinion polling showed perhaps a 2-point decline in the margin for Clinton, this conversation data suggests a 28-point change in the word of mouth “standings.” The change in word of mouth favorability metric was stunning, and much greater than the traditional opinion polling revealed.

If we had an attorney general who was actually concerned about how the FBI acted in “bad faith” to influence the outcome of the 2016 election, this is what he would be investigating. He would also be concerned that Giuliani is at it again as we head into the 2020 election—this time with corrupt Ukrainians in place of rogue FBI agents. Instead, the man who currently holds the office is chasing conspiracy theories in defense of Trump. That’s simply another reason why Eric Holder is right: William Barr is unfit to serve as attorney general.

Read the full Washington Monthly article, here.

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